fourteen years the subject never left his mind, and during the latter 

 half of that period he was constantly engaged in amassing facts bear- 

 ing upon it from wide reading, a colossal correspondence, and a long 

 series of experiments, only two or three friends were cognisant of his 

 views. To the outside world he seemed to have his hands qnite 

 sufficiently full of other matters. In 1844, he published his observa- 

 tions on the volcanic islands visited during the voyage of the " Beagle." 

 In 1845, a largely remodelled edition of his 1 Journal ' made its appear- 

 ance, and immediately won, as it has ever since held, the favour of 

 both the scientific and the nnscientific public. In 1846, the ' Geolo- 

 gical Observations in South America ' came out, and this book was no 

 sooner finished than Darwin set to work npon the Cirripedes. He 

 was led to undertake this long and heavy task, partly by his desire to 

 make ont the relations of a very anomalous form which he had dis- 

 covered on the coast of Chili ; and, partly, by a sense of " pre- 

 sumption in accumulating facts and speculating on the subject of 

 variation without, having worked out my due share of species." (II, 

 p. 31.) The eight or nine years of labour, which resulted in a mono- 

 graph of first-rate importance in systematic zoology (to say nothing 

 of such novel points as the discovery of complemental males), left 

 Darwin no room to reproach himself on this score, and few will 

 share his " doubt whether the work was worth the consumption of so 

 much time." (I, p. 82.) 



In science no man can safely speculate about the nature and rela- 

 tion of things with which he is unacquainted at first hand, and the 

 acquirement of an intimate and practical knowledge of the process of 

 species-making and of all the uncertainties which underlie the bound- 

 aries between species and varieties, drawn by even the most careful 

 and conscientious systematists* were of no less importance to the 

 author of the ' Origin of Species ' than was the bearing of the 

 Cirripede work upon " the principles of a natural classification."' 

 (I, p. 81.) Xo one, as Darwin justly observes, has a " right to examine 

 the question of species who has not minutely described many." (II, 

 p. 39.) 



In September, 1854, the Cirripede work was finished, " ten thou- 

 sand barnacles " had been sent " out of the house, all over the world," 

 and Darwin had the satisfaction of being free to turn again to his 

 " old notes on species." In 1855, he began to breed pigeons, and to 



* "After describing a set of forms as distinct species, tearing up my MS., and 

 making them one species, tearing that up and making them separate, and then 

 making them one again (which has happened to me), I have gnashed my teeth, 

 cursed species, and asked what sin I had committed to be so punished." (II, p. -40.) 

 Is there any naturalist provided with a logical sense and a large suite of specimens, 

 who has not undergone pangs of the sort described in this vigorous paragraph, 

 which might, with advantage, be printed on the title-page of every systematic 

 monograph as a warning to the uninitiated ? 



