4 i4 MY LIFE 



exquisite Androsaces, the true gems of the primrose tribe. 

 I also one day took a lonely walk up a wild valley which 

 terminated in the glacier that descends from Mount Emilius; 

 and on another day we drove up the main valley to Villeneuve, 

 and then walked up a little way into the Val Savaranches. 

 This is one of those large open valleys which have been the 

 outlet of a great glacier, and in which the subglacial torrent 

 has cut a deep narrow chasm through hard rocks at its ter- 

 mination, through which the river now empties itself into the 

 main stream of the Dora Baltea. This was the first of the 

 kind I had specially noticed, though I had seen the Gorge 

 of the Trient on my first visit to Switzerland at a time when 

 I had barely heard of the glacial epoch. 



Returning over the St. Bernard we went to Interlachen 

 and Grindelwald, saw the glaciers there, and then went over 

 the Wengern Alp, staying two days at the hotel to see the 

 avalanches and botanize among the pastures and moraines. 

 Then down to Lauterbrunnen to see the Staubbach, and 

 thence home. 



As I had found that amid the distractions and excitement 

 of London, its scientific meetings, dinner parties and sight- 

 seeing, I could not settle down to work at the more scientific 

 chapters of my " Malay Archipelago," I let my house in 

 London for a year, from midsummer, 1867, and went to live 

 with my wife's family at Hurstpierpoint. There, in perfect 

 quiet, and with beautiful fields and downs around me, I was 

 able to work steadily, having all my materials already 

 prepared. Returning to London in the summer of 1868, 

 I was fully occupied in arranging for the illustrations and 

 correcting the proofs. The work appeared at the end of the 

 year, and my volume on " Natural Selection " in the following 

 March. 



I may here state that although the proceeds of my eight 

 years collecting in the East brought me in a sufficient income 

 to live quietly as a single man, I was always on the lookout 

 for some permanent congenial employment which would yet 

 leave time for the study of my collections. The possibility 



