DARWIN AND WALLACE 33 
vessels, the Beagle touched once more at Brazil, re- 
turning home to England in 1836, after an absence of 
five years. Charles Darwin himself believed this trip 
to have been both his education and his opportunity. 
He had started on it a rather careless and indifferent 
student. He returned from it the most painstaking 
and patient naturalist the world has ever known. His 
father, who had hardly consented to his going because 
he believed him not stable enough to be intrusted to 
his own devices for so long a period, was profoundly 
moved at the sight of him on his return. Believing 
in phrenology, as did many of the physicians of his 
time, his father turned to his mother and said, ‘Look 
at the shape of his head; it is quite altered”; which, 
translated into the language of to-day, would read, 
“How wonderfully the young man has developed.” 
A part of Charles Darwin’s duty to the British 
Government was to write a narrative of the voyage, 
and this account of his trip upon the Beagle is one 
of the great classics of travel in the English language. 
It won the confidence and respect of a wide circle 
of readers. In his next book he published his ob- 
servations made at the Keeling Atoll and announced 
his theory of the formation of coral islands. This 
was a distinctly scientific investigation, and it won 
such immediate favor among geologists as to increase 
materially the young man’s reputation. No one man 
