wretched lines indicating only a few prominent external characters."

In 1848 Dr. R. W. Darwin died, and Charles Darwin wrote to Hooker, from Malvern :

:

"On the 13th of November, my poor dear father died, and no one who did not know him would believe that a man above eighty-three years old could have retained so tender and affectionate a disposition, with all his sagacity unclouded to the last. I was at the time so unwell, that I was unable to travel, which added to my misery.

"All this winter I have been bad enough and my nervous system began to be affected, so that my hands trembled, and head was often swimming. I was not able to do anything one day out of three, and was altogether too dispirited to write to you, or to do anything but what I was compelled. I thought I was rapidly going the way of all flesh. Having heard, accidentally, of two persons who had received much benefit from the water-cure, I got Dr. Gully's book, and made further inquiries, and at last started here, with wife, children, and all our servants. We have taken a house for two months, and have been here a fortnight. I am already a little stronger Dr. Gully feels pretty sure he can do me good, which most certainly the regular doctors could not. I feel certain that the water-cure is no quackery.

"How I shall enjoy getting back to Down with renovated health, if such is to be my good fortune, and resuming the beloved Barnacles. Now I hope that you will forgive me for my negligence in not having sooner answered your letter. I was uncommonly interested by the sketch you give of your intended grand expedition, from which I suppose you will soon be returning. How earnestly I hope that it may prove in every way successful.

C. D. to W. D. Fox. [March 7, 1852.]

Our long silence occurred to me a few weeks since, and I had then thought of writing, but was idle. I congratulate and condole with you on your tenth child; but please to observe when I have a tenth, send only condolences to me. We have now seven children, all well, thank God, as well as their mother; of these seven, five are boys; and my father used to say that it was certain that a boy gave as much trouble as three girls; so that bona fide we have seventeen children. It makes me sick whenever I think of professions; all seem hopelessly bad, and as yet I cannot see a ray of light. I

should very much like to talk over this (by the way, my three bugbears are Californian and Australian gold, beggaring me by making my money on mortgage worth nothing; the French coming by the Westerham and Sevenoaks roads, and therefore enclosing Down; and thirdly, professions for my boys), and I should like to talk about education, on which you ask me what we are doing. No one can more truly despise the old stereotyped stupid classical education than I do; but yet I have not had courage to break through the trammels. After many doubts we have just sent our eldest boy to Rugby, where for his age he has been very well placed. I honour, admire, and envy you for educating your boys at home. What on earth shall you do with your boys? Very many thanks for your most kind and large invitation to Delamere, but I fear we can hardly compass it. I dread going anywhere, on account of my stomach so easily failing under any excitement. I rarely even now go to London; not that I am at all worse, perhaps rather better, and lead a very comfortable life with my three hours of daily work, but it is the life of a hermit. My nights are always bad, and that stops my becoming vigorous. You ask about water-cure. I take at intervals of two or three months, five or six weeks of moderately severe treatment, and always with good effect. Do you come here, I pray and beg whenever you can find time; you cannot tell how much pleasure it would give me and E. What pleasant times we had in drinking coffee in your rooms at Christ's College, and think of the glories of Crux-major.* Ah, in those days there were no professions for sons, no ill-health to fear for them, no Californian gold, no French invasions. How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children. My dread is hereditary ill-health. Even death is better for them.

My dear Fox, your sincere friend.

P.S.-Susan † has lately been working in a way which I think truly heroic about the scandalous violation of the Act against children climbing chimneys. We have set up a little Society in Shrewsbury to prosecute those who break the law. It is all Susan's doing. She has had very nice letters from Lord Shaftesbury and the Duke of Sutherland, but the brutal Shropshire squires are as hard as stones to move. The Act out of London seems most commonly violated. It makes one shudder to fancy one of one's own children at seven years old being forced up a chimney-to say nothing of the consequent † His sister.

*The beetle Panagæus crux-major.

M

loathsome disease and ulcerated limbs, and utter moral degradation. If you think strongly on this subject, do make some enquiries; add to your many good works, this other one, and try to stir up the magistrates.

The following letter refers to the Royal Medal, which was awarded to him in November, 1853:

C. D. to J. D. Hooker. Down [November 1853].

MY DEAR HOOKER-Amongst my letters received this morning, I opened first one from Colonel Sabine; the contents certainly surprised me very much, but, though the letter was a very kind one, somehow, I cared very little indeed for the announcement it contained. I then opened yours, and such is the effect of warmth, friendship, and kindness from one that is loved, that the very same fact, told as you told it, made me glow with pleasure till my very heart throbbed. Believe me, I shall not soon forget the pleasure of your letter. Such hearty, affectionate sympathy is worth more than all the medals that ever were or will be coined. Again, my dear Hooker, I thank you. I hope Lindley* will never hear that he was a competitor against me; for really it is almost ridiculous (of course you would never repeat that I said this, for it would be thought by others, though not, I believe by you, to be affectation) his not having the medal long before me; I must feel sure that you did quite right to propose him; and what a good, dear, kind fellow you are, nevertheless, to rejoice in this honour being bestowed on me.

What pleasure I have felt on the occasion, I owe almost entirely to you.†

Farewell, my dear Hooker, yours affectionately.

The following series of extracts, must, for want of space,

*John Lindley (b. 1799, d. 1865) was the son of a nurseryman near Norwich, through whose failure in business he was thrown at the age of twenty on his own resources. He was befriended by Sir W. Hooker, and employed as assistant librarian by Sir J. Banks. He seems to have had enormous capacity for work, and is said to have translated Richard's Analyse du Fruit at one sitting of two days and three nights. He became Assistant-Secretary to the Horticultural Society, and in 1829 was appointed Professor of Botany at University College, a post which he held for upwards of thirty years. His writings are numerous; the best known being perhaps his Vegetable Kingdom, published in 1846.

† Shortly afterwards he received a fresh mark of esteem from his warm-hearted friend: "Hooker's book (Himalayan Journal) is out, and most beautifully got up. He has honoured me beyond measure by dedicating it to me!"

serve as a sketch of his feeling with regard to his seven years' work at Barnacles* :

September 1849.-"It makes me groan to think that probably I shall never again have the exquisite pleasure of making out some new district, of evolving geological light out of some troubled dark region. So I must make the best of my Cirripedia....

وو

October 1849.-"I have of late been at work at mere species describing, which is much more difficult than I expected, and has much the same sort of interest as a puzzle has; but I confess I often feel wearied with the work, and cannot help sometimes asking myself what is the good of spending a week or fortnight in ascertaining that certain just perceptible differences blend together and constitute varieties and not species. As long as I am on anatomy I never feel myself in that disgusting, horrid, cui bono, inquiring, humour. miserable work, again, it is searching for priority of names. I have just finished two species, which possess seven generic, and twenty-four specific names! My chief comfort is, that the work must be sometime done, and I may as well do it, as any one else."

What

October 1852.-" I am at work at the second volume of the Cirripedia, of which creatures I am wonderfully tired. I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a sailor in a slow-sailing ship. My first volume is out; the only part worth looking at is on the sexes of Ibla and Scalpellum. I hope by next summer to have done with my tedious work."

July 1853.-"I am extremely glad to hear that you approved of my cirripedial volume. I have spent an almost ridiculous amount of labour on the subject, and certainly would never have undertaken it had I foreseen what a job it was."

In September, 1854, his Cirripede work was practically finished, and he wrote to Sir J. Hooker:

"I have been frittering away my time for the last several

* In 1860 he wrote to Lyell: "Is not Krohn a good fellow? I have long meant to write to him. He has been working at Cirripedes, and has detected two or three gigantic blunders, about which, I thank Heaven, I spoke rather doubtfully. Such difficult dissection that even Huxley failed. It is chiefly the interpretation which I put on parts that is so wrong, and not the parts which I describe. But they were gigantic blunders, and why I say all this is because Krohn, instead of crowing at all, pointed out my errors with the utmost gentleness and pleasantness" There are two papers by Aug. Krohn, one on the Cement Glands, and the other on the development of Cirripedes, Weigmann's Archiv. xxv. and xxvi. See Autobiography, p. 39, where my father remarks, “I blundered dreadfully about the cement glands."

weeks in a wearisome manner, partly idleness, and odds and ends, and sending ten thousand Barnacles* out of the house all over the world. But I shall now in a day or two begin to look over my old notes on species. What a deal I shall have to discuss with you; I shall have to look sharp that I do not ' progress' into one of the greatest bores in life, to the few like you with lots of knowledge."

*The duplicate type-specimens of my father's Cirripedes are in the Liverpool Free Public Museum, as I learn from the Rev. H. H. Higgins.