PUBLICATIONS. 65 



have done. Besides short visits to the houses cf relations, 

 and occasionally to the- seaside or elsewhere, we have gone 

 nowhere. During the first part of our residence W3 went a 

 little into society, and received a few friends here ; but my 

 health almost always suffered from the excitement, violent 

 shivering and vomiting attacks being thus brought on. I 

 have therefore been compelled for many years to give up all 

 dinner-parties ; and this has been somewhat of a deprivation 

 to me, as such parties always put me into high spirits. From 

 the same cause I have been able to invite here very few sci- 

 entific acquaintances. 



My chief enjoyment and sole employment throughout life 

 has been scientific work ; and the excitement from such work 

 makes me for the time forget, or drives quite away, my daily 

 discomfort. I have therefore nothing to record during 

 the rest of my life, except the publication of my several 

 books. Perhaps a few details how they arose may be worth 

 giving. 



My several Publications. — In the early part of 1844, my 

 observations on the volcanic islands visited during the voyage 

 of the Beagle were published. In 1845, I t00 ^ much pains 

 in correcting a new edition of my ' Journal of Researches,' 

 which was originally published in 1839 as part of Fitz-Roy's 

 work. The success of this, my first literary child, always 

 tickles my vanity more than that of any of my other books. 

 Even to this day it sells steadily in England and the United 

 States, and has been translated for the second time into Ger- 

 man, and into French and other languages. This success of 

 a book of travels, especially of a scientific one, so many years 

 after its first publication, is surprising. Ten thousand copies 

 have been sold in England of the second edition. In 1846 

 my ' Geological Observations on South America ' were pub- 

 lished. I record in a little diary, which I have always kept, 

 that my three geological books (' Coral Reefs' included) con- 

 sumed four and a half years' steady work ; " and now it is 

 ten years since my return to England. How much time have 

 I lost by illness?" I have nothing to say about these three 



