88 The Queensland Naturalist. Vol. I. 
out between study and recreation, and utilized and 
economised in the very highest possible degree. Early 
to bed and early to rise, Avandering unseen among the lanes 
and paths, or riding slowly on his favourite black cob, 
the great naturalist passed forty years happily and use- 
fully at Down, where all the village knew and loved him.” 
\Vhile keeping in view the main object of his life, 
Darwin had not been idle in other departments of scientific 
work. He published a valuable treatise upon Coral Reefs, 
mainly from his own observations at the Keeling Islands, 
in which he proved that atolls owe their origin to the 
subsidence of the supporting ocean-floor, the rate of upward 
growth of the reefs keeping pace, on the whole, with the 
gradual depression. Of this treatise Professor Geikie 
said, forty years later : — “ No more admirable example 
of scientific method was ever given to the world, and if he 
had written nothing else, this treatise alone would have 
placed Darwin in the very front of investigators of nature.” 
Darwin’s theory of the origin of Coral Reefs has been 
attacked of late years, and a rival theory propounded by 
Dr. John, afterwards Sir John, Murray. In his paper to 
the Royal Society of Edinburgh, delivered March 14th, 
1888, Murray states : — “ It seems impossible, with our 
present knowledge, to admit that atolls or barrier-reefs 
have ever been developed after the manner indicated by 
Mr. Darwin.” 
The expeditions of Professor Sollas and of Professor 
David, to Funafuti in the Ellice Islands, have proved 
conclusively that Darwin’s theory is the correct one. In 
1851, Darwin’s monograph on the Cirripedia or Barnacles 
gave him a great reputation among the slower and more 
cautious scientific workers, as a thoroughly sound and sober 
scientific inquirer. Two years later a treatise on fossil 
barnacles completed the study of the Cirrqjedia. 
Five years after returning home in the Beagle, Darwin 
had set down some notes intended to serve as a foundation 
for his great work on the origin of species ; in 1844, he 
enlarged these notes “ into a sketch of the conclusions 
which then seemed to him probable.” These were shown 
to Sir Joseph Hooker, no doubt as a precaution to ensure 
his own claim of priority against any future possible com- 
petitor. But it was not until fifteen years later that 
Darwin’s theory of evolution was to be placed for judgment 
before the scientific world. Meanwhile, another and less 
cautious worker was arriving at many of Darwin’s con- 
clusions. 
Alfred Russel Wallace, a young Welsh biologist, in 
1848, accompanied Bates, the author of The Naturalist 
on the Amazons,” to South America to collect birds and 
butterflies, and to study tropical life in that region. The 
two young zoologists were profoundly interested in the 
