AUTOBIOGRAPHY n 



and of making acquaintance with a variety of interesting 

 savage and semi-civilized people, But, apart from ex- 

 perience of this kind and the opportunities offered for 

 scientific work, to me, personally, the cruise was ex- 

 tremely valuable. It was good for me to live under sharp 

 discipline; to be down on the realities of existence by 

 living on bare necessaries; to find out how extremely 

 well worth living life seemed to be when one woke up 

 from a night's rest on a soft plank, with the sky for 

 canopy and cocoa and weevilly biscuit the sole prospect 

 for breakfast; and, more especially, to learn to work for 

 the sake of what I got for myself out of it, even if it all 

 went to the bottom and I along with it. My brother 

 officers were as good fellows as sailors ought to be and 

 generally are, but, naturally, they neither knew nor cared 

 anything about my pursuits, nor understood why I should 

 be so zealous in pursuit of the objects which my friends, 

 the middies, christened "Buffons," after the title con- 

 spicuous on a volume of the "Suites a Buffon," which 

 stood on my shelf in the chart-room. 



During the four years of our absence, I sent home 

 communication after communication to the "Linnean So- 

 ciety," 8 with the same result as that obtained by Noah 

 when he sent the raven out of his ark. Tired at last of 

 hearing nothing about them, I determined to do or die, 

 and in 1849 I drew up a more elaborate paper and for- 

 warded it to the Royal Society. 9 This was my dove, if I 

 had only known it. But owing to the movements of the 

 ship, I heard nothing of that either until my return to 



8 The Linnean Society for the promotion of zoology and 

 botany was founded in 1788 to supplement the work of the 

 Royal Society. 



9 The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowl- 

 edge is the oldest scientific society in Great Britain. Huxley gives 

 an account of its founding in his lecture On the Advisableness of 

 Improving Natural Knowledge, in this volume, p. 18. 



