“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:--