Life and Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1Darwin, Charles
History
Life and Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1
Darwin, Charles
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882; Naturalists -- Great Britain -- Biography; Naturalists -- Great Britain -- Correspondence
His way of marking objects may here be mentioned. If he had a number of
things to distinguish, such as leaves, flowers, etc., he tied threads of
different colours round them. In particular he used this method when
he had only two classes of objects to distinguish; thus in the case of
crossed and self-fertilised flowers, one set would be marked with
black and one with white thread, tied round the stalk of the flower. I
remember well the look of two sets of capsules, gathered and waiting to
be weighed, counted, etc., with pieces of black and of white thread to
distinguish the trays in which they lay. When he had to compare two sets
of seedlings, sowed in the same pot, he separated them by a partition of
zinc-plate; and the zinc label, which gave the necessary details about
the experiment, was always placed on a certain side, so that it became
instinctive with him to know without reading the label which were the
"crossed" and which were the "self-fertilised."
His love of each particular experiment, and his eager zeal not to lose
the fruit of it, came out markedly in these crossing experiments--in
the elaborate care he took not to make any confusion in putting capsules
into wrong trays, etc., etc. I can recall his appearance as he counted
seeds under the simple microscope with an alertness not usually
characterising such mechanical work as counting. I think he personified
each seed as a small demon trying to elude him by getting into the
wrong heap, or jumping away altogether; and this gave to the work the
excitement of a game. He had great faith in instruments, and I do not
think it naturally occurred to him to doubt the accuracy of a scale or
measuring glass, etc. He was astonished when we found that one of
his micrometers differed from the other. He did not require any great
accuracy in most of his measurements, and had not good scales; he had an
old three-foot rule, which was the common property of the household,
and was constantly being borrowed, because it was the only one which
was certain to be in its place--unless, indeed, the last borrower had
forgotten to put it back. For measuring the height of plants he had a
seven-foot deal rod, graduated by the village carpenter. Latterly he
took to using paper scales graduated to millimeters. For small
objects he used a pair of compasses and an ivory protractor. It
was characteristic of him that he took scrupulous pains in making
measurements with his somewhat rough scales. A trifling example of his
faith in authority is that he took his "inch in terms of millimeters"
from an old book, in which it turned out to be inaccurately given.
He had a chemical balance which dated from the days when he worked at
chemistry with his brother Erasmus. Measurements of capacity were made
with an apothecary's measuring glass: I remember well its rough look
and bad graduation. With this, too, I remember the great care he took
in getting the fluid-line on to the graduation. I do not mean by this
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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