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
"So far from such work being a loss of time, I believe it would have
been well worth his while, had it been practicable, to have supplemented
it by a special study of embryology and physiology. His hands would
have been greatly strengthened thereby when he came to write out sundry
chapters of the 'Origin of Species.' But of course in those days it was
almost impossible for him to find facilities for such work."
No one can look a the two volumes on the recent Cirripedes, of 399
and 684 pages respectively (not to speak of the volumes on the fossil
species), without being struck by the immense amount of detailed work
which they contain. The forty plates, some of them with thirty figures,
and the fourteen pages of index in the two volumes together, give some
rough idea of the labour spent on the work. (The reader unacquainted
with Zoology will find some account of the more interesting results in
Mr. Romanes' article on "Charles Darwin" ('Nature' Series, 1882).) The
state of knowledge, as regards the Cirripedes, was most unsatisfactory
at the time that my father began to work at them. As an illustration
of this fact, it may be mentioned that he had even to re-organise the
nomenclature of the group, or, as he expressed it, he "unwillingly found
it indispensable to give names to several valves, and to some few of
the softer parts of Cirripedes." (Vol. i. page 3.) It is interesting
to learn from his diary the amount of time which he gave to different
genera. Thus the genus Chthamalus, the description of which occupies
twenty-two pages, occupied him for thirty-six days; Coronula took
nineteen days, and is described in twenty-seven pages. Writing to
Fitz-Roy, he speaks of being "for the last half-month daily hard at work
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."
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