Chapter V

DOWN--GEOLOGY OF THE VOYAGE--WORK ON CIRRIPEDES (1842–54).

From September 14th, 1842, until his death, Darwin resided at Down, living a very retired life, and almost exclusively engaged in his scientific researches. Although Down is only twenty miles from London, it is three miles from the nearest railway station (Orpington), and is only now for the first time receiving a telegraph office. A home in such a place enabled Darwin to pursue his work without interruption, remaining, at the same time, within easy reach of all the advantages of London. Here, too, he had no difficulty in avoiding social engagements, which always injured his very precarious health, and thus interfered with work; although, at the same time, he could entertain in his own house at such times as he felt able to do so.

In 1844, and again in 1846, he published works on the geology of the voyage of the _Beagle_; the first on the Volcanic Islands visited, the second on South America. A second edition, in which both were combined in a single work, appeared in 1876. He seemed somewhat disappointed at the small amount of attention they at first attracted, and wrote with much humour to J. M. Herbert:--“I have long discovered that geologists never read each other’s works, and that the only object in writing a book is a proof of earnestness, and that you do not form your opinions without undergoing labour of some kind.” All geologists were, nevertheless, soon agreed in attaching the highest value to these researches.

[Sidenote: ON CIRRIPEDES.]

From this time forward his work was almost exclusively zoological. The four monographs on the Cirripedia, recent and fossil, occupied eight years--from October, 1846, to October, 1854. The works on the recent forms were published by the Ray Society (1851 and 1854), and those on the fossil forms by the Palæontographical Society (1851 and 1854). These researches grew directly out of his observations on the _Beagle_, but it is evident that they reached far greater dimensions than he had at first intended. Thus, at the very beginning of the work, he wrote (October, 1846) to Hooker:--

“I am going to begin some papers on the lower marine animals,
which will last me some months, perhaps a year, and then I shall
begin looking over my ten-year-long accumulation of notes on
species and varieties, which, with writing, I dare say will take
me five years, and then, when published, I dare say I shall stand
infinitely low in the opinion of all sound Naturalists--so this
is my prospect for the future.”

Darwin himself, at any rate towards the end of his life, when he wrote his “Autobiography,” doubted “whether this work was worth the consumption of so much time,” although admitting that it was of “considerable value” when he had “to discuss in the ‘Origin of Species’ the principles of a natural classification.” Sir Joseph Hooker remembers that Darwin at an earlier time “recognised three stages in his career as a biologist: the mere collector at Cambridge; the collector and observer in the _Beagle_ and for some years afterwards; and the trained naturalist after, and only after, the Cirripede work” (Letter to F. Darwin).

Professor Huxley considers that just as by Darwin’s practical experience of physical geography, geology, etc., on the _Beagle_, “he knew of his own knowledge the way in which the raw materials of these branches of science are acquired, and was, therefore, a most competent judge of the speculative strain they would bear,” so his Cirripede work fitted him for his subsequent speculations upon the deepest biological problems. “It was a piece of critical self-discipline, the effect of which manifested itself in everything your father wrote afterwards, and saved him from endless errors of detail” (Letter to F. Darwin, “Life and Letters”). The history of Darwin’s career has often been used as an argument against those who, not having passed through a similar training as regards systematic zoological work, have ventured to concern themselves with the problems of evolution. Professor Meldola has recently treated of this subject in his interesting presidential address to the Entomological Society (1896). He says:--

“It used formerly to be asserted that he only is worthy of
attention who has done systematic, _i.e._ taxonomic, work.
I do not know whether this view is still entertained by
entomologists; if so, I feel bound to express my dissent. It
has been pointed out that the great theorisers have all done
such work--that Darwin monographed the Cirripedia, and Huxley
the oceanic Hydrozoa, and it has been said that Wallace’s and
Bates’s contributions in this field have been their biological
salvation. I yield to nobody in my recognition of the value
and importance of taxonomic work, but the possibilities of
biological investigation have developed to such an extent
since Darwin’s time that I do not think this position can any
longer be seriously maintained. It must be borne in mind that
the illustrious author of the ‘Origin of Species’ had none of
the opportunities for systematic training in biology which any
student can now avail himself of. To him the monographing of the
Cirripedia was, as Huxley states in a communication to Francis
Darwin, ‘a piece of critical self-discipline,’ and there can be
no reasonable doubt that this value of systematic work will be
generally conceded. That this kind of work gives the sole right
to speculate at the present time is, however, quite another
point.”

Meldola then goes on to argue that the systematic work of those who know nothing of the living state of the species they are describing does not specially fit them for theorising, and he concludes by quoting the following passage from a letter recently received from A. R. Wallace:--

“I do not think species-describing is of any special use to the
philosophical generaliser, but I do think the collecting, naming,
and classifying some extensive group of organisms is of great
use, is, in fact, almost essential to any thorough grasp of the
whole subject of the evolution of species through variation
and natural selection. I had described nothing when I wrote my
papers on variation, etc. (except a few fishes and palms from the
Amazon), but I had collected and made out species very largely
and had seen to some extent how curiously useful and protective
their forms and colours often were, and all this was of great use
to me.”

Towards the end of this long period of hard taxonomic labour, we know from Darwin’s letters that he was extremely tired of the work; but with marvellous resolution--and in spite of the trouble of his health, which was perhaps worse than at any other time--he clung to and carried through this stupendous task, although all the time attracted away from it by the weightier problems which he could never thrust aside after they had once made their claim upon him.

[Sidenote: ON NAMING SPECIES.]

Darwin was evidently greatly disconcerted at the task of making out those special difficulties which man has added to the difficulties of Nature herself--the disheartening tangle of nomenclature. He thought that the custom of appending the name of the systematist after that of the species or genus he had named was injurious to the interests of science--inducing men to name quickly rather than describe accurately. Some of his remarks on this subject indicate the state of his mind. Thus he wrote to Hooker, October 6th, 1848:--

“I have lately been trying to get up an agitation ... against
the practice of Naturalists appending for perpetuity the name
of the _first_ describer to species. I look at this as a direct
premium to hasty work, to _naming_ instead of _describing_. A
species ought to have a name so well known that the addition of
the author’s name would be superfluous, and ... empty vanity....
Botany, I fancy, has not suffered so much as zoology from mere
_naming_; the characters, fortunately, are more obscure.... Why
should Naturalists append their own names to new species, when
Mineralogists and chemists do not do so to new substances?”

And again he wrote to Hugh Strickland, January 29th, 1849:--

“I have come to a fixed opinion that the plan of the first
describer’s name, being appended for perpetuity to a species, has
been the greatest curse to Natural History.... I feel sure as
long as species-mongers have their vanity tickled by seeing their
own names appended to a species, because they miserably described
it in two or three lines, we shall have the same _vast_ amount of
bad work as at present, and which is enough to dishearten any man
who is willing to work out any branch with care and time.”

And in another letter (February 4th) to the same correspondent:--

“In mineralogy I have myself found there is no rage to merely
name; a person does not take up the subject without he intends
to work it out, as he knows that his _only_ claim to merit rests
on his work being ably done, and has no relation whatever to
_naming_.... I do not think more credit is due to a man for
defining a species, than to a carpenter for making a box. But I
am foolish and rabid against species-mongers, or rather against
their vanity; it is useful and necessary work which must be done;
but they act as if they had actually made the species, and it was
their own property.”

A little later in the same year (1849) his health seems to have determined him to give up the crusade, for he writes to Hooker (April 29th):--

“With health and vigour, I would not have shewn a white feather,
[and] with aid of half-a-dozen really good Naturalists, I
believe something might have been done against the miserable and
degrading passion of mere species naming.”

Anyone whose researches have been among the species of any much-worked and much-collected zoological group will quite agree that synonymy is, as Darwin found it, heart-breaking work; and although there may be good reasons why the system of appending the describer’s name must be retained, such a protest as that raised in these letters cannot fail to do good in drawing attention to an abuse which is only too common, and which introduces unnecessary difficulty and gratuitous confusion into the study of Nature.

[Sidenote: DEATH OF HIS FATHER.]

His father, Dr. Darwin, died November 13th, 1848, at the age of eighty-three, when he was so much out of health that he was unable to attend the funeral. In 1851 he lost his little daughter Annie, who died at Malvern, April 23rd. A few days after her death he wrote a most affecting account of her--a composition of great beauty and pathos.