volumes, will appreciate more than ever the breadth and the solidity of the basis of patiently acquired knowledge which Charles Darwin had accumulated while his "Origin of Species" was taking shape. At the anniversary meeting of the Royal Society in November, 1853, a royal medal was presented to the author of "Coral Reefs" and the "Memoir on the Cirripedia," the president, the Earl of Rosse, eulogizing the former as one of the most important contributions to modern geology, and the latter as containing new facts and conclusions of first-rate interest. Finally, this chapter of Darwin's life may be closed with the tardy award of the Wollaston medal to him by the Geological Society, in February, 1859, when Professor John Phillips spoke of him as combining the rarest acquirements as a naturalist, with the qualifications of a first-class geologist, and as having by his admirable monograph on the fossil Cirripedia added much to a reputation already raised to the highest rank. Yet even such a reputation could not secure fair treatment and impartial judgment for the coming book, the subject of which might be supposed to require supreme gifts of the very kind Darwin possessed. FOOTNOTES: [5: Mr. John Murray's views, derived from the experience acquired in the voyage of the _Challenger_, and published in 1880, tend to modify Darwin's conclusions to some extent. Mr. Murray says that it is now shown that many submarine mountains exist, which are usually volcanic, and which, being built upon by various forms of shell-bearing animals, could be raised to such a level that ordinary corals could build upon them. He concludes that probably all atolls are seated on submarine volcanoes, and thus it is not necessary to suppose such extensive and long-continued subsidences as Darwin suggested. This view is also in harmony with Dana's views of the great antiquity and permanence of the great ocean basin. See "The Structure and Origin of Reefs and Islands." By John Murray; Proc. Roy. Soc., Edin., x. 505-18 (abstract); also _Nature_, xxii. 351-5.] CHAPTER IV. If no other record of Darwin's twenty-two years (1837-59) of life and thought after his return to England remained than the papers and books he published during that period, we should find enough to place him on a level with the most gifted biologists and geologists of his age. But all that time he was occupied with thoughts, researches, and experiments, of which the world at large perceived no fruits. Few persons suspected that a tremendous revolution in scientific thought was in preparation at the quiet country home at Down. New species of animals and plants were being described by naturalists at an alarming rate. The bulk of knowledge of specific characters and the necessity of specialisation bade fair to make every species-monger a dry and narrow pedant; and the pedants quarrelled about the characters and limits of their species.