It was fifty years ago,In the pleasant month of May,In the beautiful Pays de Vaud,A child in its cradle lay.And Nature, the old nurse, tookThe child upon her knee,Saying: "Here is a story-bookThy Father has written for thee.""Come wander with me," she said,"Into regions yet untrod,And read what is still unreadIn the manuscripts of God."And he wandered away and awayWith Nature, the dear old nurse,Who sang to him night and dayThe rhymes of the universe.And whenever the way seemed long,Or his heart began to fail,She would sing a more wonderful song,Or tell a more marvellous tale.So she keeps him still a child,And will not let him go,Though at times his heart beats wildFor the beautiful Pays de Vaud;Though at times he hears in his dreamsThe Ranz des Vaches of old,And the rush of mountain streamsFrom glaciers clear and cold;And the mother at home says, "Hark!For his voice I listen and yearn;It is growing late and dark,And my boy does not return!"
It was fifty years ago,In the pleasant month of May,In the beautiful Pays de Vaud,A child in its cradle lay.And Nature, the old nurse, tookThe child upon her knee,Saying: "Here is a story-bookThy Father has written for thee.""Come wander with me," she said,"Into regions yet untrod,And read what is still unreadIn the manuscripts of God."And he wandered away and awayWith Nature, the dear old nurse,Who sang to him night and dayThe rhymes of the universe.And whenever the way seemed long,Or his heart began to fail,She would sing a more wonderful song,Or tell a more marvellous tale.So she keeps him still a child,And will not let him go,Though at times his heart beats wildFor the beautiful Pays de Vaud;Though at times he hears in his dreamsThe Ranz des Vaches of old,And the rush of mountain streamsFrom glaciers clear and cold;And the mother at home says, "Hark!For his voice I listen and yearn;It is growing late and dark,And my boy does not return!"
This year, 1857, Agassiz received an unexpected honor—a call to one of the most coveted places at the Jardin des Plantes; the chair of palæontology in the Museum of Natural History, Paris. Though obliged to refuse it because he considered his life-work to be in America, he appreciated the favor as also the bestowal of the Order of the Legion of Honor, and the Copley medal from England. Twenty-seven years before, he had received in Paris the aid of Humboldt in his destitution; now, two hemispheres competed for his services.
The following year, 1858, Mr. Francis C. Gray died, leaving fifty thousand dollars for the establishment of a Museum of Comparative Zoölogy, to be used neither for buildings nor for salaries, but purely for scientific needs.
"All things come round to him who will but wait," says Longfellow, in the "Falcon of Sir Federigo." Other gifts soon followed. Harvard University gave land for the site of the building. The Massachusetts Legislature gave lands to the amount of one hundred thousand dollars. Over seventy-one thousand was promptly subscribed by citizens of Boston and Cambridge. Agassiz contributed all his collections, worth thousands of dollars. The corner-stone of the museum was laid one sunny afternoon in June, 1859, and then the happy Agassiz hastened across the ocean, to rejoice with his mother, in her home near the foot of the Jura. She was glad and proud now that he had become a naturalist.
The museum was dedicated November 13, 1860. The plan included a main building 364 feet long, with wings 205 long, the whole enclosing a hollow square. The lecture rooms were at once opened. Especially welcome were teachers of schools, for whom admittance was free. His lectures were open to women as well as to men. This would naturally be expected, from the broad-mindedness of the man, and the respect he must have had for the capacity of woman, from such a mother and such a wife. "He had great sympathy," says Mrs. Agassiz, "with the desire of women for larger and more various fields of study and work." To such men women can never be too grateful.
In 1863, he helped to organize the National Academy of Sciences. He frequently gave lectures in the large cities, using the money for the further development of the museum.
In 1865 he started, with his wife and several assistants, for sixteen months of scientific investigation in Brazil, the expenses borne by his friend, Mr. Nathaniel Thayer, of Boston. He writes to his mother,—
"All those who know me seem to have combined to heighten the attraction of the journey, and facilitate it in every respect. The Pacific Mail Steamship Company have invited me to take passage with my whole party on their fine steamer, the Colorado. They will take us, free of all expense, as far as Rio de Janeiro,—an economy of fifteen thousand francs at the start.... I seem like the spoiled child of the country, and I hope God will give me strength to repay, in devotion to her institutions and to her scientific and intellectual development, all that her citizens have done for me....With all my heart,"YourLouis."
"All those who know me seem to have combined to heighten the attraction of the journey, and facilitate it in every respect. The Pacific Mail Steamship Company have invited me to take passage with my whole party on their fine steamer, the Colorado. They will take us, free of all expense, as far as Rio de Janeiro,—an economy of fifteen thousand francs at the start.... I seem like the spoiled child of the country, and I hope God will give me strength to repay, in devotion to her institutions and to her scientific and intellectual development, all that her citizens have done for me....
With all my heart,
"YourLouis."
The story of this expedition has been told, chiefly by Mrs. Agassiz, in that most interesting volume, "A Journey in Brazil."
On Agassiz's return, he gave a course of lectures before the Lowell Institute, and the Cooper Institute, New York, spending the summer at his pleasant seaside home and laboratory at Nahant.
The fisherman at Nahant would pull two or three miles to bring him a rare fish; and only for the pleasure of seeing him rush out of his little laboratory, crying: "Oh! wheredidyou get that? That is a species which goes as far as Brazil. Nobody has ever seen it north of Cape Cod. Come in, come in, and sit down!"
In 1868, Agassiz, invited by Mr. Samuel Hooper, joined a party of friends in an excursion to the Rocky Mountains. This year he was appointed non-resident professor at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
The Massachusetts Legislature now gave seventy-five thousand dollars, and private individuals an equal sum, to provide for the new collections at the museum. Later, the museum received from the Legislature twenty-five thousand more, and a birthday gift to Agassiz, of one hundred thousand dollars, was also used by him for his precious work. September 15, 1869, at the Humboldt Centennial Celebration, Agassiz delivered an eloquent address before the Boston Society of Natural History, and the "Humboldt Scholarship" was founded at the museum. The bread cast upon the waters by Humboldt had been found after many days.
Agassiz was now completely prostrated by overwork, and told by his physician that for the several months in which he remained shut up in his room he must not think. Yet he could not banish one subject from his thoughts, and, with tears in his eyes, he would sometimes exclaim,—"Oh, my museum! my museum! always uppermost, by day and by night, in health and in sickness, always—always!"
The great mind rallied for one more voyage of research in his beloved science. In the coast-survey steamer Hassler, with his wife and friends, he sailed December 4, 1871, around Cape Horn, landing at several places along the coast, gathering rich treasures from deep-sea dredgings, entering the Golden Gate August 24, 1872.
In October, Agassiz returned to Cambridge. Through the gift of Mr. John Anderson, a wealthy New York merchant, of the island of Penikese, in Buzzard's Bay, with its buildings and an endowment of fifty thousand dollars, a summer school of natural history was at once opened. This year was a very busy one. A series of articles were in preparation for the "Atlantic Monthly," in opposition to the views of Darwin on evolution. He had already published two successful books, "Methods of Study in Natural History," and "Geological Sketches." December 2, 1873, a lecture was given at Fitchburg, before a meeting of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture. The next day Agassiz spoke of dimness of sight, and of feeling "strangely asleep," and on December 14 he was asleep in death.
He was buried from the college chapel, the students who loved him laying a wreath of laurel upon the bier, and singing his requiem. The noble mother, fortunately, had died six years before him.
They buried him at Mount Auburn. From the glacier of the Aar, not far from the spot where his little hut once stood, they brought a boulder for his monument, and from his old home in Switzerland, pine trees to grow beside his grave. He loved both countries, and both have shared in his sacred resting-place.
His work will never cease. His museum at Cambridge now has seventy-one rooms and twelve galleries, with invested funds of over five hundred and eighty thousand dollars, while the buildings and collections are valued at about seven hundred thousand dollars. It is now under the charge of Prof. Alexander Agassiz, the son of Louis, and to his constant generosity and devotion the museum is deeply indebted.
Agassiz said, "My hope is that there shall arise upon the grounds of Harvard a museum of natural history which shall compete with the British Museum and with the Jardin des Plantes. Do not say it cannot be done, for you cannot suppose that what exists in England and France cannot be reached in America. I hope even that we shall found a museum which will be based upon a more suitable foundation, and better qualified to advance the highest interests of science than these institutions of the old world."
Agassiz not only wrote books and built museums. He gave to the world a high ideal of a seeker after truth. He stimulated the intellectual activity of two continents, and blessed both of them by his own brilliant mind and his noble character.
On Wednesday, April 26, 1882, sitting in the North Transept of Westminster Abbey, I looked upon a sad and impressive scene. Under the dome stood an oaken coffin, quite covered with white wreaths; close by were seated the distinguished pall-bearers, Sir John Lubbock, Canon Farrar, the Duke of Argyle, Thomas H. Huxley, James Russell Lowell, and others. Representatives of many nations were present; the great scientists of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Russia.
Of the thousands who were gathered to honor the famous dead, every person wore black, as requested on the cards of admission to the abbey. Perhaps never in the history of England have so many noted men been assembled on an occasion like this. As the choir, in their white robes, stood about the open grave, singing the "Dead March from Saul," the strains seemed to come from a far-off country, producing an effect never to be forgotten. Darwin lies buried close to the graves of Sir Isaac Newton and Sir John Herschel.
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN.CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN.
At Shrewsbury, England, February 12, 1809, Charles Robert Darwin was born, in a square, red-brick house at the top of a terraced bank leading down to the Severn. The greenhouse with its varied plants, the ornamental shrubs and trees in the grounds, became a delight as soon as the boy was old enough to observe them.
The mother, Susannah, the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood of Etruria, a woman with a sweet and happy face, died when Charles was eight years old, leaving five other children; Marianne, Caroline, Erasmus, Susan, and Catherine. Charles says of her in his autobiography, "It is odd that I can remember hardly anything about her except her death-bed, her black velvet gown, and her curiously constructed work-table." She evidently encouraged the boy's love for flowers, for he used to say, at school, that his mother had taught him "how, by looking at the inside of the blossom, the name of the plant could be discovered."
The father, Robert Waring Darwin, was a well known physician, a man of fine physique and courtly manner, who had amassed wealth by his skill and business ability. Charles's admiration of him was unbounded: "the wisest man I ever knew," he used often to say.
"His chief mental characteristics," said Darwin, "were his powers of observation and his sympathy, neither of which have I ever seen exceeded or even equalled. His sympathy was not only with the distresses of others, but in a greater degree with the pleasures of all around him. This led him to be always scheming to give pleasure to others, and, though hating extravagance, to perform many generous actions. For instance, Mr. B——, a small manufacturer in Shrewsbury, came to him one day, and said he should be bankrupt unless he could at once borrow ten thousand pounds, but that he was unable to give any legal security. My father heard his reasons for believing that he could ultimately repay the money, and, from his intuitive perception of character, felt sure that he was to be trusted. So he advanced this sum, which was a very large one for him while young, and was after a time repaid.
"I suppose that it was his sympathy which gave him unbounded power of winning confidence, and as a consequence made him highly successful as a physician. He began to practise before he was twenty-one years old, and his fees during the first year paid for the keep of two horses and a servant. On the following year his practice was large, and so continued for about sixty years, when he ceased to attend on any one. His great success as a doctor was the more remarkable as he told me that he at first hated his profession so much that if he had been sure of the smallest pittance, or if his father had given him any choice, nothing should have induced him to follow it. To the end of his life, the thought of an operation almost sickened him, and he could scarcely endure to see a person bled—a horror which he has transmitted to me."
Charles went to the day-school in Shrewsbury, when he was eight years old. "By the time I went to this day-school," he says, "my taste for natural history, and more especially for collecting, was well developed. I tried to make out the names of plants, and collected all sorts of things, shells, seals, franks, coins, and minerals. The passion for collecting, which leads a man to be a systematic naturalist, a virtuoso, or a miser, was very strong in me, and was clearly innate, as none of my sisters or brothers ever had this taste....
"I must have been a very simple little fellow when I first went to the school. A boy of the name of Garnett took me into a cake-shop one day, and bought some cakes, for which he did not pay, as the shopman trusted him. When he came out I asked him why he did not pay for them, and he instantly answered, 'Why, do you not know that my uncle left a great sum of money to the town on condition that every tradesman should give whatever was wanted without payment to any one who wore his old hat and moved it in a particular manner?' and he then showed me how it was moved. He then went into another shop where he was trusted, and asked for some small article, moving his hat in the proper manner, and of course obtained it without payment.
"When we came out, he said: 'Now, if you like to go by yourself into that cake-shop (how well I remember its exact position) I will lend you my hat, and you can get whatever you like if you move the hat on your head properly.' I gladly accepted the generous offer, and went in and asked for some cakes, moved the old hat and was walking out of the shop when the shopman made a rush at me, so I dropped the cakes and ran for dear life, and was astonished by being greeted with shouts of laughter by my false friend Garnett.
"In the summer of 1818, I went to Dr. Butler's great school in Shrewsbury, and remained there for seven years, till midsummer, 1825, when I was sixteen years old. I boarded at this school, so that I had the great advantage of living the life of a true schoolboy; but as the distance was hardly more than a mile to my home, I very often ran there in the longer intervals between the callings over, and before locking up at night. This, I think, was in many ways advantageous to me, by keeping up home affections and interests. I remember, in the early part of my school life, that I often had to run very quickly to be in time, and, from being a fleet runner, was generally successful; but when in doubt I prayed earnestly to God to help me, and I well remember that I attributed my success to the prayers and not to my quick running, and marvelled how generally I was aided.
"I have heard my father and elder sister say that I had, as a very young boy, a strong taste for long, solitary walks; but what I thought about I know not. I often became quite absorbed, and once, whilst returning to school on the summit of the old fortifications round Shrewsbury, which had been converted into a public footpath with no parapet on one side, I walked off and fell to the ground, but the height was only seven or eight feet. Nevertheless, the number of thoughts which passed through my mind during this very short but sudden and wholly unexpected fall was astonishing, and seem hardly compatible with what physiologists have, I believe, proved about each thought requiring quite an appreciable amount of time."
As Dr. Butler's school was strictly classical, Darwin always felt that, for him, these years were nearly wasted. He read many authors, Shakspeare, Thomson's Seasons, Byron, and Scott, but later in life, he says, lost all taste for poetry. This he greatly regretted, and said, if he were to live his life over, he would read some poetry every day. The book that most influenced him was the "Wonders of the World," which gave him a desire to travel, which was finally realized in the voyage of the Beagle. He did not forget his zest in collecting, at first, however, taking only such insects as he found dead, for, after consulting his sister, he "concluded that it was not right to kill insects for the sake of making a collection. From reading White's 'Selborne,' I took much pleasure in watching the habits of birds, and even made notes on the subject. In my simplicity, I remember wondering why every gentleman did not become an ornithologist.
"Towards the close of my school-life, my brother worked hard at chemistry, and made a fair laboratory, with proper apparatus, in the tool-house in the garden, and I was allowed to aid him as a servant in most of his experiments. He made all the gases and many compounds, and I read with great care several books on chemistry, such as Henry and Parkes' 'Chemical Catechism.' The subject interested me greatly, and we often used to go on working till rather late at night. This was the best part of my education at school, for it showed me practically the meaning of experimental science. The fact that we worked at chemistry somehow got known at school, and, as it was an unprecedented fact, I was nicknamed 'Gas.'...
"When I left the school, I was for my age neither high nor low in it, and I believe that I was considered by all my masters and by my father as a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect. To my deep mortification, my father once said to me: 'You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.' But my father, who was the kindest man I ever knew, and whose memory I love with all my heart, must have been angry and somewhat unjust when he used such words."
Dr. Darwin now sent his two boys, Erasmus and Charles, to Edinburgh University. Here, Charles found the lectures "intolerably dull," all except those on chemistry by Hope. His father, evidently not being able to determine for what his son was best fitted in life, suggested his being a doctor. The youth attended the clinical wards in the hospital, but one day witnessing two operations, one upon a child, he rushed away. He says, "Nor did I attend again, for hardly any inducement would have been strong enough to make me do so; this being long before the blessed days of chloroform. The two cases fairly haunted me for many a long year."
While in Edinburgh, Charles became deeply interested in marine zoölogy, and read a paper before the Plinian Society, an association organized for the study of natural history. He also attended the meetings of the Wernerian Society, where he heard Audubon deliver some interesting lectures upon the habits of North American birds, and the Royal Society, where he saw Sir Walter Scott in the chair as president.
"I looked at him and at the whole scene," says Darwin, "with some awe and reverence, and I think it was owing to this visit during my youth, and to my having attended the Royal Medical Society, that I felt the honor of being elected, a few years ago, an honorary member of both these societies more than any other similar honor. If I had been told at that time that I should one day have been thus honored, I declare that I should have thought it as ridiculous and improbable as if I had been told that I should be elected King of England."
During this time, Charles met Sir James Mackintosh, "the best converser," he says, "I ever listened to. I heard afterwards, with a glow of pride, that he had said, 'There is something in that young man that interests me.'... To hear of praise from an eminent person, though no doubt apt or certain to excite vanity, is, I think, good for a young man, as it helps to keep him in the right course."
After two years at Edinburgh, Dr. Darwin, seeing that Charles probably would never become a physician, sent him to Cambridge University, that he might prepare for the Episcopal ministry.
Of this time he says, "The three years which I spent at Cambridge were wasted, as far as the academical studies were concerned, as completely as at Edinburgh and at school. I attempted mathematics, and even went during the summer of 1828 with a private tutor (a very dull man) to Barmouth, but I got on very slowly. The work was repugnant to me, chiefly from my not being able to see any meaning in the early steps in algebra." He found great delight in Paley's "Evidences of Christianity," and his "Moral Philosophy."
At Cambridge, like Humboldt, he formed a rare friendship, which helped towards his subsequent success. Professor Henslow was an ardent scholar, a devoted Christian, and a man of most winning manners and good temper. From his great knowledge of botany, entomology, chemistry, mineralogy, and geology, he became a most attractive person to young Darwin, whose especial passion seemed to be the collecting of beetles. Henslow soon became equally fond of Darwin, and the two took long walks together daily, Darwin being known as "the man who walks with Henslow."
Darwin said of this model teacher, years afterward, "He had a remarkable power of making the young feel completely at ease with him; though we were all awe-struck with the amount of his knowledge. Before I saw him, I heard one young man sum up his attainments by simply saying that he knew everything. When I reflect how immediately we felt at ease with a man older, and in every way immensely our superior, I think it was as much owing to the transparent sincerity of his character as to his kindness of heart, and, perhaps, even still more to a highly remarkable absence in him of all self-consciousness. One perceived at once that he never thought of his own varied knowledge or clear intellect, but solely on the subject in hand.
"Another charm which must have struck every one was that his manner to old and distinguished persons and to the youngest student was exactly the same; and to all he showed the same winning courtesy. He would receive with interest the most trifling observation in any branch of natural history, and, however absurd a blunder one might make, he pointed it out so clearly and kindly that one left him no way disheartened, but only determined to be more accurate the next time.
"His lectures on botany were universally popular, and as clear as daylight. So popular were they that several of the older members of the University attended successive courses. Once every week he kept open house in the evening, and all who cared for natural history attended these parties, which, by thus favoring intercommunication, did the same good in Cambridge, in a very pleasant manner, as the scientific societies do in London.... This was no small advantage to some of the young men, as it stimulated their mental activity and ambition....
"During the years when I associated so much with Professor Henslow, I never once saw his temper even ruffled. He never took an ill-natured view of any one's character, though very far from blind to the foibles of others. It always struck me that his mind could not be even touched by any paltry feeling of vanity, envy, or jealousy. With all this equability of temper and remarkable benevolence, there was no insipidity of character. A man must have been blind not to have perceived that beneath this placid exterior there was a vigorous and determined will. When principles came into play, no power on earth could have turned him one hair's breadth....
"Reflecting over his character with gratitude and reverence, his moral attributes rise, as they should do in the highest character, in preëminence over his intellect."
Through this noble friend, Darwin had the opportunity of taking a five years' voyage in the ship Beagle, as a naturalist. The bark, of two hundred and thirty-five tons, under command of Captain Fitz-Roy, was commissioned by government to survey Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, the shores of Chili, Peru, and some islands in the Pacific, "and to carry a chain of chronometrical measurements round the world."
Professor Henslow knew the captain, and recommended his young friend for the position. Darwin had read Humboldt's travels eagerly, and was delighted with the prospect of a journey like this.
Dr. Darwin was opposed at first, but finally said, "If you can find any man of common sense who advises you to go, I will give my consent." Young Darwin at once visited his uncle, Josiah Wedgwood, at Maer, who approved of the journey, and soon convinced Dr. Darwin of the wisdom of it.
The vessel sailed December 27, 1831. Though for a young man of an extremely affectionate nature the separation from family was painful, yet it was a glad day for Darwin. He had looked forward eagerly to it, saying, "My second life will then commence, and it shall be as a birthday for the rest of my life," and so it proved. He said, years afterward, "The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life, and has determined my whole career."
These years were busy, earnest ones, devoted to constant labor. To his father he wrote from Bahia, or San Salvador, the following spring: "No person could imagine anything so beautiful as the ancient town of Bahia; it is fairly embosomed in a luxuriant wood of beautiful trees, and situated on a steep bank, and overlooks the calm waters of the great Bay of All Saints. The houses are white and lofty, and, from the windows being narrow and long, have a very light and elegant appearance.... But the exquisite, glorious pleasure of walking amongst such flowers and such trees cannot be comprehended but by those who have experienced it.... I will not rapturize again, but I give myself great credit in not being crazy out of pure delight. Give my love to every soul at home.... I think one's affections, like other good things, flourish and increase in these tropical regions."
Again he writes from Rio de Janeiro: "Here (at Rio-Macoa) I first saw a tropical forest in all its sublime grandeur—nothing but the reality can give any idea how wonderful, how magnificent the scene is.... I never experienced such intense delight. I formerly admired Humboldt, I now almost adore him; he alone gives any notion of the feelings which are raised in the mind on first entering the Tropics. I am now collecting fresh-water and land animals.... I am at present red-hot with spiders; they are very interesting, and, if I am not mistaken, I have already taken some new genera." Busy as he was, he was ever thinking of home, and anxious to receive letters. When they were received, he almost "cried for pleasure."
He writes to his sister: "If you knew the glowing, unspeakable delight which I felt at being certain that my father and all of you were well, only four months ago, you would not grudge the labor lost in keeping up the regular series of letters."
Later he writes: "It is too delightful to think that I shall see the leaves fall and hear the robin sing next autumn at Shrewsbury. My feelings are those of a schoolboy to the smallest point; I doubt whether ever boy longed for his holidays as much as I do to see you all again."
To his "dear Henslow" he writes: "It is now some months since we have been at a civilized port; nearly all this time has been spent in the most southern part of Tierra del Fuego.... The Fuegians are in a more miserable state of barbarism than I had expected ever to have seen a human being. In this inclement country they are absolutely naked, and their temporary houses are like what children make in summer with boughs of trees."
Captain Fitz-Roy, on a previous voyage, had carried several natives to England, and now brought them again to their own land. "They had become," says Darwin, "entirely European in their habits and wishes, so much so that the younger one had forgotten his own language, and their countrymen paid but very little attention to them. We built houses for them, and planted gardens, but by the time we return again on our passage round the Horn, I think it will be very doubtful how much of their property will be left unstolen."
At the Cape of Good Hope, Darwin met and dined with Sir John Herschel. For some time he lived at St. Helena, "within a stone's throw of Napoleon's tomb." He became so deeply interested in his geological investigations in South America, that he wrote his sister Susan: "I literally could hardly sleep at nights for thinking over my day's work. The scenery was so new, and so majestic; everything at an elevation of twelve thousand feet bears so different an aspect from that in a lower country."
To another sister he wrote: "I trust and believe that the time spent in this voyage, if thrown away for all other respects, will produce its full worth in Natural History; and it appears to me the doing whatlittlewe can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life as one can in any likelihood pursue.... What fine opportunities for geology and for studying the infinite host of living beings! Is not this a prospect to keep up the most flagging spirit? If I was to throw it away, I don't think I should ever rest quiet in my grave."
Darwin says: "As far as I can judge of myself, I worked to the utmost during the voyage, from the mere pleasure of investigation, and from my strong desire to add a few facts to the great mass of facts in natural science. But I was also ambitious to take a fair place among scientific men." In studying the geology of St. Jago, "It then first dawned on me that I might perhaps write a book on the geology of the various countries visited, and this made me thrill with delight. That was a memorable hour to me, and how distinctly I can call to mind the low cliff of lava beneath which I rested, with the sun glaring hot, a few strange desert plants growing near, and with living corals in the tidal pools at my feet. Later in the voyage, Fitz-Roy asked me to read some of my journal, and declared it would be worth publishing, so here was a second book in prospect!"
Darwin, stirred by the right kind of ambition, had found his life-work. It would not be in the church, as his father had fondly hoped, but the world would be his audience.
On October 5, 1836, Darwin arrived at Shrewsbury, after five years' absence. He left home a high-spirited, warm-hearted youth, fond of athletic sports, and vigorous in body. He came back with a passionate love for science, "with the habit of energetic industry and of concentrated attention," but with health impaired, which made the whole of his after life a battle with suffering. Yet he conquered, and gave to his generation a wonderful example of the power of mind over body; of victory over obstacles.
During the voyage he was an almost constant sufferer from sea-sickness. He wrote home the last year: "It is a lucky thing for me that the voyage is drawing to its close, for I positively suffer more from sea-sickness now than three years ago."
"After perhaps an hour's work," says Admiral Stokes, "he would say to me, 'Old fellow, I must take the horizontal for it,' that being the best relief position from ship motion. A stretch out on one side of the table for some time would enable him to resume his labors for a while, when he had again to lie down. It was distressing to witness this early sacrifice of Mr. Darwin's health, who ever afterwards seriously felt the ill effects of the Beagle's voyage."
Admiral Mellersh says: "I think he was the only man I ever knew against whom I never heard a word said; and as people, when shut up in a ship for five years, are apt to get cross with each other, that is saying a good deal." Says another: "He was never known to be out of temper, or to say one unkind or hasty wordofortoany one."
This lovely spirit, which so endeared him to everybody, Darwin kept through life,—a spirit which sheds a halo around every book he wrote, and makes him worthy the admiration and honor of every young man. Many persons have the gift of writing books, but comparatively few persons have the great gift of self-control.
After a brief visit with his family, Darwin hastened to Cambridge, to prepare his "Journal of Travels." He had learned on the Beagle that "a man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life." After three months of hard work, he went to London, where he finished the "Journal," and began working on his "Zoölogy of the Voyage of the Beagle," and his "Geological Observations." He said at this time: "I have nothing to wish for, excepting stronger health to go on with the subjects to which I have joyfully determined to devote my life."
For three years and eight months he worked untiringly. He wrote Henslow: "I fear the Geology will take me a great deal of time; I was looking over one set of notes, and the quantity I found I had to read for that one place was frightful. If I live till I am eighty years old I shall not cease to marvel at finding myself an author. In the summer before I started, if any one had told me that I should have been an angel by this time, I should have thought it an equal impossibility. This marvellous transformation is all owing to you."
Darwin and Lyell now became very intimate friends. "I am coming into your way, of only working about two hours at a spell," he writes to Lyell; "I then go out and do my business in the streets, return and set to work again, and thus make two separate days out of one." Of Lyell he said: "One of his chief characteristics was his sympathy with the work of others.... The science of geology is enormously indebted to Lyell—more so, as I believe, than to any other man who ever lived."
The "Journal" was published in 1839. January twenty-nine of this year, Mr. Darwin, now thirty years of age, was married to his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, daughter of Josiah Wedgwood of Maer, and granddaughter of the founder of the potteries of Etruria. The extreme happiness of his married life proved the wisdom of his choice. He said in after years, "No one can be too kind to my dear wife, who is worth her weight in gold many times over."
They lived at No. 12 Upper Gower Street, as he wrote a college mate, "a life of extreme quietness.... We have given up all parties, for they agree with neither of us; and if one is quiet in London, there is nothing like its quietness."
In 1842, his "Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs" was published, a book which cost him, he says, "twenty months of hard work, as I had to read every work on the islands of the Pacific, and to consult many charts." Of this book, Professor Geikie says: "This well known treatise, the most original of all its author's geological memoirs, has become one of the classics of geological literature. The origin of those remarkable rings of coral-rock in mid-ocean has given rise to much speculation, but no satisfactory solution of the problem has been proposed. After visiting many of them, and examining also coral reefs that fringe islands and continents, he offered a theory which, for simplicity and grandeur, strikes every reader with astonishment.... No more admirable example of scientific method was ever given to the world, and, even if he had written nothing else, this treatise alone would have placed Darwin in the very front of investigators of nature."
Lyell wrote to Darwin concerning this book: "It is all true, but do not flatter yourself that you will be believed till you are growing bald, like me, with hard work and vexation at the incredulity of the world."
Darwin's next work, on the "Volcanic Islands Visited during the Voyage of the Beagle," was published in 1844. This book, he said, "cost me eighteen months." His third geological book, "Geological Observations on South America," was published in 1846.
Meantime, tired of smoky London, Darwin purchased a home in Down, a retired village five or six hundred feet above the sea. The house was a square brick building, of three stories, vine-covered, in the midst of eighteen acres. "Its chief merit," Darwin writes to a friend, "is its extreme rurality. I think I was never in a more perfectly quiet country." Here, for forty years, Darwin lived the isolated life of a student, producing the books that made him the most noted scientist of his century. Of these years, Mr. Darwin said: "Few persons can have lived a more retired life than we have done. Besides short visits to the houses of relations, and occasionally to the seaside or elsewhere, we have gone nowhere. During the first part of our residence we went a little into society, and received a few friends here; but my health almost always suffered from the excitement.... I have, therefore, been compelled for many years to give up all dinner parties.... From the same cause I have been able to invite here very few scientific 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."
At Down, Darwin worked for eight years on two large volumes concerning cirripedia (barnacles), describing all the known living species; the extinct species, or fossil cirripedes, were in two smaller volumes. The first books were published by the Ray Society, between 1851 and 1854; the others by the Palæontographical Society. About two years out of the eight were lost through illness. Sometimes he became half discouraged. He wrote a friend, "I have been so steadily going downhill, I cannot help doubting whether I can ever crawl a little uphill again. Unless I can, enough to work a little, I hope my life may be very short, for to lie on a sofa all day and do nothing but give trouble to the best and kindest of wives and good, dear children is dreadful."
Darwin doubted, in after life, "whether the work was worth the consumption of so much time," but Professor Huxley thinks he "never did a wiser thing than when he devoted himself to the years of patient toil which the cirriped-book cost him.... The value of the cirriped monograph lies not merely in the fact that it is a very admirable piece of work, and constituted a great addition to positive knowledge, but still more in the circumstance that it was a piece of critical self-discipline, the effect of which manifested itself in everything he wrote afterwards, and saved him from endless errors of detail." Darwin's patient labor is shown by his working "for the last half-month, daily, in dissecting a little animal about the size of a pin's head, from the Chonos archipelago, and I could spend another month, and daily see more beautiful structure."
During these years from 1846 to 1854, death had twice disturbed the quiet life at Down. In 1849, Dr. Darwin died, and his son Charles was so ill that he could not attend the funeral. In 1851, Annie Darwin died, at the age of ten, after a brief illness. "She was," said Darwin, "my favorite child; her cordiality, openness, buoyant joyousness, and strong affections made her most lovable.... When quite a baby, this [strong affection] showed itself in never being easy without touching her mother when in bed with her; and quite lately she would, when poorly, fondle for any length of time one of her mother's arms.... She would at almost any time spend half an hour in arranging my hair, 'making it,' as she called it, 'beautiful,' or in smoothing, the poor, dear darling, my collar or cuffs—in short, in fondling me.... Her whole mind was pure and transparent. One felt one knew her thoroughly and could trust her. I always thought that, come what might, we should have had, in our old age, at least one loving soul which nothing could have changed.
"All her movements were vigorous, active, and usually graceful. When going round the Sandwalk with me, although I walked fast, yet she often used to go before, pirouetting in the most elegant way, her dear face bright all the time with the sweetest smiles. Occasionally she had a pretty coquettish manner towards me, the memory of which is charming....
"In the last short illness her conduct, in simple truth, was angelic. She never once complained; never became fretful; was ever considerate of others, and was thankful in the most gentle, pathetic manner for everything done for her. When so exhausted that she could hardly speak, she praised everything that was given her, and said some tea 'was beautifully good.' When I gave her some water, she said, 'I quite thank you;' and these, I believe, were the last precious words ever addressed by her dear lips to me."
Such consideration and politeness she naturally inherited. Francis Darwin says in his delightful life of his father, "He always spoke to servants with politeness, using the expression, 'Would you be so good,' in asking for anything. In business matters he was equally courteous. His solicitor, who had never met him, said, 'Everything I did was right, and everything was profusely thanked for.'" Of the drawings made by his children, he would say, "Michael Angelo is nothing to it!" but he always looked carefully at the work and kindly pointed out mistakes.
"He received," says his son, "many letters from foolish, unscrupulous people, and all of these received replies. He used to say that if he did not answer them, he had it on his conscience afterwards, and, no doubt, it was in great measure the courtesy with which he answered every one which produced the universal and widespread sense of his kindness of nature which was so evident on his death."
In November, 1853, Darwin received the Royal Society's Medal. He was gratified, finding it "a pleasant little stimulus. When work goes badly, and one ruminates that all is vanity, it is pleasant to have some tangible proof that others have thought something of one's labors."
November 24, 1859, when Darwin was fifty, his great work, "Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life," was published. For twenty years he had been making experiments with plants and animals, and filling his note-books with facts. To his old classmate, Fox, he writes asking that the boys in his school gather lizards' eggs, as well as those of snakes. "My object is," he says, "to see whether such eggs will float on sea-water, and whether they will keep alive thus floating for a month or two in my cellar. I am trying experiments on transportation of all organic beings that I can; and lizards are found on every island, and therefore I am very anxious to see whether their eggs stand sea-water." Again he writes, asking Fox for ducklings and dorkings; "The chief point which I am and have been for years very curious about is to ascertain whether theyoungof our domestic breeds differ as much from each other as do their parents, and I have no faith in anything short of actual measurement and the Rule of Three.... I have got my fan-tails and pouters in a grand cage and pigeon-house, and they are a decided amusement to me, and delight to H."
Of this book, Darwin himself says: "I worked on true Baconian principles, and without any theory—collected facts on a wholesale scale, more especially with respect to domesticated productions, by printed inquiries, by conversation with skilful breeders and gardeners, and by extensive reading. When I see the list of books of all kinds which I read and abstracted, including whole series of Journals and Transactions, I am surprised at my industry. I soon perceived that selection was the keystone of man's success in making useful races of animals and plants....
"In October, 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read 'Malthus on Population,' and, being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on, from long continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species.... But at that time I overlooked one problem of great importance.... This problem is the tendency in organic beings descended from the same stock to diverge in character as they become modified. That they have diverged greatly is obvious from the manner in which species of all kinds can be classed under genera, genera under families, families under sub-orders, and so forth.... The solution, as I believe, is that the modified offspring of all dominant and increasing forms tend to become adapted to many and highly diversified places in the economy of nature."
The book was written slowly, each chapter requiring at least three months. When the "Origin of Species"—which had reached its thirty-third thousand in 1888—was published, it created the most profound sensation throughout the thinking world. Heretofore, most men of science had believed that each species had been separately created by the Almighty,—that species were immutable, unchanging.
Mr. Darwin, by twenty years of study, proved to his own mind, and now to most of the world, that there has been a gradual evolution, through unnumbered ages, of one form of animal life from another. He said, "Probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on the earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed."
The theory of evolution was not original with Darwin. Lamarck, in 1801, published his "Organization of Living Bodies," in which he stated his belief "that nature, in all the long ages during which the world has existed, may have produced the different kinds of plants and animals by gradually enlarging one part and diminishing another to suit the wants of each." Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, Goethe, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles, all believed that species are descended from other species, and in various ways improved.
Some of the reasons for the belief in evolution are so simply and clearly stated by Arabella B. Buckley, in her "Short History of Natural Science," that I quote her words:—
"All the Animals of each class are formed on the same plan....
"Why should the animals of one class (such as the vertebrate or back-boned class) be formed all on one plan, even to the most minute bones; so that the wing of a bat, the front leg of a horse, the hand of a man, and the flapper of a porpoise, are all made of the same bones, which have either grown together, or lengthened and spread apart, according to the purpose they serve? And, more curious still, why should some animals have parts which are of no use to them, but only seem to be there because other animals of the same class also have them? Thus the whale has teeth like the other mammalia, but they never pierce through the gum; and the boa-constrictor has the beginnings of hind legs, hidden under its skin, though they never grow out. Here, again, it seems extraordinary, if a boa-constrictor and a whale were created separately, that they should be made with organs which are quite useless; while, on the other hand, if they were descended from the same ancestor, as other reptiles and mammalia who have teeth and hind legs, they might be supposed to have inherited these organs....
"Embryos of animals alike in Structure.
"Another still more remarkable fact was that pointed out by Von Baer, that the higher animals, such as quadrupeds, before they are perfectly formed, cannot be distinguished from the embryos of other and lower animals, such as fish and reptiles. If animals were created separately, why should a dog begin like a fish, a lizard, and a bird, and have at first parts which it loses as it grows into its own peculiar form?
"Living animals of a country agree with the fossil ones....
"We know that certain animals are only found in particular countries; kangaroos and pouched animals, for example, in Australia, and sloths and armadillos in South America. Now, it is remarkable that all the fossil quadrupeds in Australia are also pouched animals, though they are of different kinds and larger in size than those now living; and in the same way different species of sloth and armadillos are found fossil in South America; while in the rocks of Europe fossil mammalia are found, only slightly different from those which are living there now." It seems natural to conclude that the living have descended from the fossils.
The study of the rocks has produced other "missing links" in the succession of animal life. Professor Huxley, in some lectures given in New York in 1876, described the Hesperornis, found in the western rocks,—a huge bird, five or six feet in length, with teeth like a reptile. In England a fossil reptile has been found, the Archæopteryx, having a reptile-like tail, with a fringe of feathers on each side, and teeth, "occupying a midway place between a bird and a reptile." Flying reptiles have been found, and reptiles which walked on their hind legs. Those who have visited Yale and Amherst Colleges must have seen the huge bird-tracks or reptile foot-prints taken from the rocks in the Connecticut valley.
Professor Huxley showed the probable descent of the horse with its hoofed foot from the extinct three-toed Hipparion of Europe, and that from the four-toed Orohippus of the Eocene formation. He declared it probable that a five-toed horse would be found, and Professor Marsh, in the West, has found the Eohippus, corresponding very nearly to Professor Huxley's description.
The question among naturalists was, "How can plants and animals have become thus changed?" Darwin showed how it was possible to effect most of these changes by "natural selection," or the choosing of the best to survive in the struggle for existence. As man by grafting secures the finest fruit, and by care in animal life the swiftest horses for speed as well as the strongest for labor, so nature selects her best for the higher development of the race.
Darwin says, "There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and, at this rate, in less than a thousand years there would literally not be standing-room for his progeny.... The elephant is reckoned the slowest breeder of all known animals; it will be safest to assume that it begins breeding when thirty years old, and goes on breeding till ninety years old, bringing forth six young in the interval, and surviving till one hundred years old; if this be so, after a period of from 740 to 750 years, there would be nearly nineteen million elephants alive, descended from the first pair."
In various ways the weakest are destroyed. Darwin, on a piece of ground three feet long and two wide, says, "I marked all the seedlings of our native weeds as they came up, and, out of 357, no less than 295 were destroyed, chiefly by slugs and insects."
He gives this interesting instance of the struggle for existence. "I find from experiments that humble-bees are almost indispensable to the fertilization of the heart's-ease, for other bees do not visit this flower.... Humble-bees alone visit red clover, as other bees cannot reach the nectar.... Hence we may infer as highly probable that, if the whole genus of humble-bees became extinct or very rare in England, the heart's-ease and red clover would become very rare, or wholly disappear. The number of humble-bees in any district depends in a great measure upon the number of field-mice, which destroy their combs and nests; the number of mice is largely dependent, as every one knows, on the number of cats." Hence, as Mr. Darwin shows, the frequency of certain flowers in a district may depend upon the number of cats!
Darwin showed, by most interesting experiments with pigeons, that the various breeds come from the wild rock-pigeon; that dogs are descended, probably, from the wolf; that different varieties can be produced and perpetuated under changing conditions of life; that species are only well marked and permanent varieties. He showed how organs can be changed by use or disuse; such as, the erect ears of wild animals become drooping under domestication; or moles have only rudimentary eyes, covered with skin or fur, because not needed for sight.
In the "Origin of Species," the theory of evolution received proof which was so nearly incontrovertible that the subject was brought prominently before the world as never before. Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace, an able scientist, came to the same conclusion as Darwin in regard to the power of "Natural Selection," and published, at the same time as the "Origin," an essay "On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type."
At once Darwin was attacked from every quarter. Probably not since Galileo showed that the earth moves round the sun has a man been so censured and persecuted for his opinions as was Darwin. He was declared atheistic, unsettling the Christian belief, and opposed to the teachings of the Bible. Professor Asa Gray of Cambridge, Mass., a devoted Christian and able scientist, defended and explained Darwin's views, now published in "Darwiniana," claiming that the doctrine of evolution is in no wise opposed to the power and goodness of the Almighty, and quotes Charles Kingsley's words: "We know of old that God was so wise that he could make all things; but behold, he is so much wiser than even that, that he can make all things make themselves." Kingsley wrote Darwin: "I have gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of Deity to believe that he created primal forms capable of self-development into all forms needfulpro temporeandpro loco, as to believe that he required a fresh act of intervention to supply thelacunaswhich he himself had made. I question whether the former be not the loftier thought." Gray believed that "to do any work by an instrument must require, and therefore presuppose, the exertion rather of more than of less power than to do it directly." Darwin said, "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, have been and are being evolved." Darwin always felt grateful to Asa Gray for his defence. He wrote him: "I declare that you know my book as well as I do myself; and bring to the question new lines of illustration and argument, in a manner which excites my astonishment and almost my envy!... I said, in a former letter, that you were a lawyer, but I made a gross mistake; I am sure that you are a poet. No, I will tell you what you are, a hybrid, a complex cross of lawyer, poet, naturalist, and theologian!"
Darwin wisely made no reply to his critics. He said, years later: "My views have often been grossly misrepresented, bitterly opposed and ridiculed, but this has been generally done, as I believe, in good faith. On the whole, I do not doubt that my works have been over and over again greatly overpraised. I rejoice that I have avoided controversies, and this I owe to Lyell, who, many years ago, in reference to my geological works, strongly advised me never to get entangled in a controversy, as it rarely did any good, and caused a miserable loss of time and temper.
"Whenever I have found out that I have blundered, or that my work has been imperfect, and when I have been contemptuously criticised, and even when I have been overpraised, so that I have felt mortified, it has been my greatest comfort to say hundreds of times to myself, 'that I have worked as hard and as well as I could, and no man can do more than this.'"
The "Origin" has been translated into French, German, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Swedish, and many other languages. Huxley says of it, "Even a cursory glance at the history of the biological sciences during the last quarter of a century is sufficient to justify the assertion that the most potent instrument for the extension of the realm of natural knowledge which has come into men's hands since the publication of Newton's 'Principia' is Darwin's 'Origin of Species.'"
The year after the "Origin" was published, Darwin began arranging his notes for his two large volumes, "Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," which, however, were not published till 1868. On these two books he spent over four years. They are a wonderful collection of facts, gathered from books and from his own marvellous experiments and observations, confirming and illustrating the law of "Natural Selection" given in the "Origin."
Darwin had already received the Copley medal of the Royal Society, the greatest honor a scientific man can receive in England, and the Prussian Order "Pour le Mérite," founded by Frederick II. The order consists of thirty German members and a few distinguished foreigners. In 1862 the "Fertilization of Orchids" was published, which, required ten months of labor. In this work Darwin took the utmost delight. He wrote to a friend who had sent him some of these flowers: "It is impossible to thank you enough. I was almost mad at the wealth of Orchids.... I never was more interested in any subject in my life than in this of Orchids." The peculiarities of the flowers therein described, as Darwin says, "transcend in an incomparable manner the contrivances and adaptations which the most fertile imagination of man could invent."
In the "Origin" he describes an orchid which "has part of its labellum or lower lip hollowed out into a great bucket, into which drops of almost pure water continually fall from two secreting horns which stand above it; and when the bucket is half full the water overflows by a spout on one side. The basal part of the labellum stands over the bucket, and is itself hollowed out into a sort of chamber with two lateral entrances; within this chamber there are curious fleshy ridges. The most ingenious man, if he had not witnessed what takes place, could never have imagined what purpose all these parts serve. But Dr. Crüger saw crowds of large humble-bees visiting the gigantic flowers of this orchid, not in order to suck nectar, but to gnaw off the ridges within the chamber above the bucket; in doing this they frequently pushed each other into the bucket, and, their wings being thus wetted, they could not fly away, but were compelled to crawl out through the passage formed by the spout or overflow.... The passage is narrow, and is roofed over by the column, so that a bee, in forcing its way out, first rubs its back against the viscid stigma and then against the viscid glands of the pollen-masses. The pollen-masses are thus glued to the back of the bee which first happens to crawl out through the passage of a lately expanded flower, and are thus carried away....
"When the bee, thus provided, flies to another flower, or to the same flower a second time, and is pushed by its comrades into the bucket and then crawls out by the passage, the pollen-mass necessarily comes first into contact with the viscid stigma, and adheres to it, and the flower is fertilized. Now at last we see the full use of every part of the flower; of the water-secreting horns, of the bucket half full of water, which prevents the bees from flying away, and forces them to crawl out through the spout, and rub against the properly placed viscid pollen-masses and the viscid stigma."
Darwin said: "The Botanists praise my Orchid-book to the skies.... There is a superb, but, I fear, exaggerated, review in the 'London Review.' But I have not been a fool, as I thought I was, to publish; for Asa Gray, about the most competent judge in the world, thinks almost as highly of the book as does the 'London Review.'"
Darwin wrote several other books on plants. "The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants" was published in 1875; "Insectivorous Plants," in 1875; "Effects of Cross and Self-Fertilization," in 1876; "The different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species," in 1877; "The Power of Movement in Plants," in 1880.
When writing his "Different Forms of Flowers," he said, "I am all on fire at the work;" and of "Insectivorous Plants," "I have been working like a madman at Drosera. Here is a fact for you which is certain as you stand where you are, though you won't believe it, that a bit of hair, 1/78000 of one grain in weight, placed on gland, will causeoneof the gland-bearing hairs of Drosera to curve inwards, and will alter the condition of the content of every cell in the foot-stalk of the gland."
But he was growing tired with his constant and multifarious labors. He wrote to Hooker: "You ask about my book, and all that I can say is that I am ready to commit suicide; I thought it was decently written, but find so much wants rewriting that it will not be ready to go to printers for two months, and will then make a confoundedly big book. Murray will say that it is no use publishing in the middle of summer, so I do not know what will be the upshot; but I begin to think that every one who publishes a book is a fool."
In 1871 the "Descent of Man" was published. He worked on this book three years, and he wrote to his friend, Sir J. D. Hooker, that it has "half killed" him. For the first edition Darwin received over seven thousand dollars. It had an immense circulation in England and America, and created a furor in Germany.
Darwin believed "that man is descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World. This creature, if its whole structure had been examined by a naturalist, would have been classed among the quadrumana, as surely as would the common and still more ancient progenitor of the Old and New World monkeys.
"The quadrumana and all the higher mammals are probably derived from an ancient marsupial animal, and this, through a long line of diversified forms, either from some reptile-like or some amphibian-like creature, and this again from some fishlike animal. In the dim obscurity of the past, we can see that the early progenitor of all the vertebrata must have been an aquatic animal, provided with branchiæ, with the two sexes united in the same individual, and with the most important organs of the body (such as the brain and heart) imperfectly developed. This animal seems to have been more like the larvæ of our existing marine Ascidians than any known form."
Most naturalists believe, with Darwin, that man has developed from some lower form, but many urge that at some stage of development he received the gift of speech, and mental and moral powers, from an omnipotent Creator.
Darwin received much abuse and much ridicule for his views. Mr. James D. Hague tells in "Harper's Magazine" of a visit paid to the great scientist, when a picture in the "Hornet" was shown; the body of a gorilla, with the head of Darwin. The latter laughed and said, "The head is cleverly done, but the gorilla is bad; too much chest; it couldn't be like that."
The "Descent of Man" shows the widest research, and is a storehouse of most interesting facts. "Sexual Selection" shows some of the most remarkable provisions of nature, and is as interesting as any novel. This book, like the "Origin," has been translated into various languages.
In 1872 "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals" was published. Over five thousand copies were sold on the day of publication. It was begun at the birth of his first child, thirty-three years before. He says, "I at once commenced to make notes on the first dawn of the various expressions which he exhibited, for I felt convinced, even at this early period, that the most complex and fine shades of expression must all have had a gradual and natural origin." He wrote to a college friend regarding this baby: "He is so charming that I cannot pretend to any modesty. I defy anybody to flatter us on our baby, for I defy any one to say anything in its praise of which we are not fully conscious.... I had not the smallest conception there was so much in a five-mouth baby. You will perceive by this that I have a fine degree of paternal fervor."
In 1881, "The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Action of Worms, with Observations on their Habits," was published. "Fragments of burnt marl, cinders, etc., which had been thickly strewed over the surface of several meadows were found, after a few years, lying at a depth of some inches beneath the turf, but still forming a layer." Ascertaining that this was the work of worms, Darwin made a study of their structure, habits, and work, in his garden, his fields, and in pots of earth kept in his study. The intelligence of worms, the construction of their burrows, and the amount of labor they can perform, are described in a most entertaining manner. Over fifty thousand worms are found in a single acre of land, or about three hundred and fifty-six pounds. "In many parts of England a weight of more than ten tons of dry earth annually passes through their bodies, and is brought to the surface, on each acre of land.... Worms prepare the ground in an excellent manner for the growth of fibrous-rooted plants and for seedlings of all kinds. They periodically expose the mould to the air, and sift it so that no stones larger than the particles which they can swallow are left in it. They mingle the whole intimately together, like a gardener who prepares fine soil for his choicest plants.... The plough is one of the most ancient and most valuable of man's inventions; but long before he existed the land was in fact regularly ploughed, and still continues to be thus ploughed, by earthworms. It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world as have these lowly organized creatures."
In three years eighty-five hundred copies of the "Earthworms" were sold.
Mr. Darwin was now seventy-two years old. Already many honors had come to him, after the severe and bitter censure. In 1877, he received the degree of LL.D. from Cambridge University. In 1878, he was elected a corresponding member of the French Institute, and of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. In 1879, he received the Baly Medal of the Royal College of Physicians. In 1879, from the Royal Academy of Turin, theBressaPrize of twelve thousand francs. He valued highly two photographic albums sent from Germany and Holland; one containing the pictures of one hundred and fifty-four noted scientific men; the other, of two hundred and seventeen lovers of natural science in the Netherlands. He wrote in thanks: "I am well aware that my books could never have been written, and would not have made any impression on the public mind, had not an immense amount of material been collected by a long series of admirable observers; and it is to them that honor is chiefly due. I suppose that every worker at science occasionally feels depressed, and doubts whether what he has published has been worth the labor which it has cost him, but for the few remaining years of my life, whenever I want cheering, I will look at the portraits of my distinguished co-workers in the field of science, and remember their generous sympathy."
He was made a member of more than seventy of the learned societies of the world; in America, Austria, India, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and elsewhere.
Darwin's work was now almost over. His dear friend Lyell had gone before him, of whom he said, "I never forget that almost everything which I have done in science I owe to the study of his great works." His brother Erasmus, to whom he was tenderly attached, died in 1881. In the spring of 1882 he was unable to work continuously as usual, and suffered from pain about the heart. On the night of April 18, he had a severe attack and fainted. When he was restored to consciousness, he said, "I am not the least afraid to die." He died the next day, April 19.
Darwin died as he had lived, with a heart overflowing with sympathy and tenderness. He said, "I feel no remorse from having committed any great sin, but have often and often regretted that I have not done more direct good to my fellow-creatures."
In his home life he was singularly blest. His son says, "No one except my mother knows the full amount of suffering he endured, or the full amount of his wonderful patience. For all the latter years of his life she never left him for a night; and her days were so planned that all his resting hours might be shared with her. She shielded him from every avoidable annoyance, and omitted nothing that might save him trouble, or prevent him becoming overtired, or that might alleviate the many discomforts of his ill-health. I hesitate to speak thus freely of a thing so sacred as the life-long devotion which prompted all this constant and tender care. But it is ... a principal feature of his life that for nearly forty years he never knew one day of the health of ordinary men, and that thus his life was one long struggle against the weariness and strain of sickness." And yet he accomplished all his wonderful work!
"In his relationship towards my mother, his tender and sympathetic nature was shown in its most beautiful aspect. In her presence he found his happiness, and through her his life—which might have been overshadowed by gloom—became one of content and quiet gladness."
He was the idol of his children, who used "to bribe him with sixpence to come and play in working hours." "We all knew the sacredness of working time," says Mr. Darwin's daughter, "but that any one should resist sixpence seemed an impossibility.... Another mark of his unbounded patience was the way in which we were suffered to make raids into the study when we had an absolute need of sticking-plaster, string, pins, scissors, stamps, foot-rule, or hammer. These and other such necessaries were always to be found in the study, and it was the only place where this was a certainty. We used to feel it wrong to go in during work-time; still, when the necessity was great we did so. I remember his patient look when he said once, 'Don't you think you could not come in again; I have been interrupted very often?'... He cared for all our pursuits and interests, and lived our lives with us in a way that very few fathers do."
His son says: "The way he brought us up is shown by a little story about my brother Leonard, which my father was fond of telling. He came into the drawing-room, and found Leonard dancing about on the sofa, which was forbidden, for the sake of the springs, and said, 'Oh, Lenny, Lenny, that's against all rules!' and received for answer, 'Then, I think you'd better go out of the room.' I do not believe he ever spoke an angry word to any of his children in his life; but I am certain that it never entered our heads to disobey him.... How often, when a man, I have wished, when my father was behind my chair, that he would pass his hand over my hair, as he used to do when I was a boy. He allowed his grown-up children to laugh with and at him, and was, generally speaking, on terms of perfect equality with us."
He was very fond of flowers, and also of dogs. When he had been absent from home, on his return his white fox-terrier, Polly, "would get wild with excitement, panting, squeaking, rushing round the room, and jumping on and off the chairs; and he used to stoop down, pressing her face to his, letting her lick him, and speaking to her with a peculiarly tender, caressing voice."
He was very tender-hearted. A friend who often visited at Down told me that Mrs. Darwin one day urged her husband to punish the little dog for some wrong-doing. He took the animal tenderly in his arms and carried her out-of-doors, patting her gently on the head. "Why, Charles," remonstrated the wife, "she did not feel it." He replied, "I could do no more."
"The remembrance of screams or other sounds heard in Brazil," says Francis Darwin, "when he was powerless to interfere with what he believed to be the torture of a slave, haunted him for years, especially at night. In smaller matters, when he could interfere, he did so vigorously. He returned one day from his walk pale and faint from having seen a horse ill-used, and from the agitation of violently remonstrating with the man. On another occasion he saw a horse-breaker teaching his son to ride. The little boy was frightened, and the man was rough. My father stopped, and, jumping out of the carriage, reproved the man in no measured terms....
"A visitor, driving from Orpington to Down, told the man to go faster. 'Why,' said the driver, 'if I had whipped the horsethismuch driving Mr. Darwin, he would have got out of the carriage and abused me well.'"
His manner was bright and animated, and his face glowed in conversation. He enjoyed fun, had a merry, ringing laugh, and a happy way of turning things. He said once, "Gray (Asa Gray of Harvard College) often takes me to task for making hasty generalizations; but the last time he was here talking that way, I said to him, 'Now, Gray, I have one more generalization to make, which is not hasty; and that is, the Americans are the most delightful people I know.'"
"He was particularly charming when 'chaffing' any one," says his son, "and in high spirits over it. His manner at such times was light-hearted and boyish, and his refinement of nature came out most strongly. So, when he was talking to a lady who pleased and amused him, the combination of raillery and deference in his manner was delightful to see. When my father had several guests, he managed them well, getting a talk with each, or bringing two or three together round his chair....
"My father much enjoyed wandering slowly in the garden with my mother or some of his children, or making one of a party sitting out on a bench on the lawn; he generally sat, however, on the grass, and I remember him often lying under one of the big lime-trees, with his head on the green mound at its foot."