Part 24

In 1881, "The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Action of Worms, with Observations on their Habits," was published. "Fragments of burnt marl, cinders, etc., which had been thickly strewed over the surface of several meadows were found, after a few years, lying at a depth of some inches beneath the turf, but still forming a layer." Ascertaining that this was the work of worms, Darwin made a study of their structure, habits, and work, in his garden, his fields, and in pots of earth kept in his study. The intelligence of worms, the construction of their burrows, and the amount of labor they can perform, are described in a most entertaining manner. Over fifty thousand worms are found in a single acre of land, or about three hundred and fifty-six pounds. "In many parts of England a weight of more than ten tons of dry earth annually passes through their bodies, and is brought to the surface, on each acre of land.... Worms prepare the ground in an excellent manner for the growth of fibrous-rooted plants and for seedlings of all kinds. They periodically expose the mould to the air, and sift it so that no stones larger than the particles which they can swallow are left in it. They mingle the whole intimately together, like a gardener who prepares fine soil for his choicest plants.... The plough is one of the most ancient and most valuable of man's inventions; but long before he existed the land was in fact regularly ploughed, and still continues to be thus ploughed, by earthworms. It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world as have these lowly organized creatures."

In three years eighty-five hundred copies of the "Earthworms" were sold.

Mr. Darwin was now seventy-two years old. Already many honors had come to him, after the severe and bitter censure. In 1877, he received the degree of LL.D. from Cambridge University. In 1878, he was elected a corresponding member of the French Institute, and of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. In 1879, he received the Baly Medal of the Royal College of Physicians. In 1879, from the Royal Academy of Turin, the _Bressa_ Prize of twelve thousand francs. He valued highly two photographic albums sent from Germany and Holland; one containing the pictures of one hundred and fifty-four noted scientific men; the other, of two hundred and seventeen lovers of natural science in the Netherlands. He wrote in thanks: "I am well aware that my books could never have been written, and would not have made any impression on the public mind, had not an immense amount of material been collected by a long series of admirable observers; and it is to them that honor is chiefly due. I suppose that every worker at science occasionally feels depressed, and doubts whether what he has published has been worth the labor which it has cost him, but for the few remaining years of my life, whenever I want cheering, I will look at the portraits of my distinguished co-workers in the field of science, and remember their generous sympathy."

He was made a member of more than seventy of the learned societies of the world; in America, Austria, India, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and elsewhere.

Darwin's work was now almost over. His dear friend Lyell had gone before him, of whom he said, "I never forget that almost everything which I have done in science I owe to the study of his great works." His brother Erasmus, to whom he was tenderly attached, died in 1881. In the spring of 1882 he was unable to work continuously as usual, and suffered from pain about the heart. On the night of April 18, he had a severe attack and fainted. When he was restored to consciousness, he said, "I am not the least afraid to die." He died the next day, April 19.

Darwin died as he had lived, with a heart overflowing with sympathy and tenderness. He said, "I feel no remorse from having committed any great sin, but have often and often regretted that I have not done more direct good to my fellow-creatures."

In his home life he was singularly blest. His son says, "No one except my mother knows the full amount of suffering he endured, or the full amount of his wonderful patience. For all the latter years of his life she never left him for a night; and her days were so planned that all his resting hours might be shared with her. She shielded him from every avoidable annoyance, and omitted nothing that might save him trouble, or prevent him becoming overtired, or that might alleviate the many discomforts of his ill-health. I hesitate to speak thus freely of a thing so sacred as the life-long devotion which prompted all this constant and tender care. But it is ... a principal feature of his life that for nearly forty years he never knew one day of the health of ordinary men, and that thus his life was one long struggle against the weariness and strain of sickness." And yet he accomplished all his wonderful work!

"In his relationship towards my mother, his tender and sympathetic nature was shown in its most beautiful aspect. In her presence he found his happiness, and through her his life--which might have been overshadowed by gloom--became one of content and quiet gladness."

He was the idol of his children, who used "to bribe him with sixpence to come and play in working hours." "We all knew the sacredness of working time," says Mr. Darwin's daughter, "but that any one should resist sixpence seemed an impossibility.... Another mark of his unbounded patience was the way in which we were suffered to make raids into the study when we had an absolute need of sticking-plaster, string, pins, scissors, stamps, foot-rule, or hammer. These and other such necessaries were always to be found in the study, and it was the only place where this was a certainty. We used to feel it wrong to go in during work-time; still, when the necessity was great we did so. I remember his patient look when he said once, 'Don't you think you could not come in again; I have been interrupted very often?'... He cared for all our pursuits and interests, and lived our lives with us in a way that very few fathers do."

His son says: "The way he brought us up is shown by a little story about my brother Leonard, which my father was fond of telling. He came into the drawing-room, and found Leonard dancing about on the sofa, which was forbidden, for the sake of the springs, and said, 'Oh, Lenny, Lenny, that's against all rules!' and received for answer, 'Then, I think you'd better go out of the room.' I do not believe he ever spoke an angry word to any of his children in his life; but I am certain that it never entered our heads to disobey him.... How often, when a man, I have wished, when my father was behind my chair, that he would pass his hand over my hair, as he used to do when I was a boy. He allowed his grown-up children to laugh with and at him, and was, generally speaking, on terms of perfect equality with us."

He was very fond of flowers, and also of dogs. When he had been absent from home, on his return his white fox-terrier, Polly, "would get wild with excitement, panting, squeaking, rushing round the room, and jumping on and off the chairs; and he used to stoop down, pressing her face to his, letting her lick him, and speaking to her with a peculiarly tender, caressing voice."

He was very tender-hearted. A friend who often visited at Down told me that Mrs. Darwin one day urged her husband to punish the little dog for some wrong-doing. He took the animal tenderly in his arms and carried her out-of-doors, patting her gently on the head. "Why, Charles," remonstrated the wife, "she did not feel it." He replied, "I could do no more."

"The remembrance of screams or other sounds heard in Brazil," says Francis Darwin, "when he was powerless to interfere with what he believed to be the torture of a slave, haunted him for years, especially at night. In smaller matters, when he could interfere, he did so vigorously. He returned one day from his walk pale and faint from having seen a horse ill-used, and from the agitation of violently remonstrating with the man. On another occasion he saw a horse-breaker teaching his son to ride. The little boy was frightened, and the man was rough. My father stopped, and, jumping out of the carriage, reproved the man in no measured terms....

"A visitor, driving from Orpington to Down, told the man to go faster. 'Why,' said the driver, 'if I had whipped the horse _this_ much driving Mr. Darwin, he would have got out of the carriage and abused me well.'"

His manner was bright and animated, and his face glowed in conversation. He enjoyed fun, had a merry, ringing laugh, and a happy way of turning things. He said once, "Gray (Asa Gray of Harvard College) often takes me to task for making hasty generalizations; but the last time he was here talking that way, I said to him, 'Now, Gray, I have one more generalization to make, which is not hasty; and that is, the Americans are the most delightful people I know.'"

"He was particularly charming when 'chaffing' any one," says his son, "and in high spirits over it. His manner at such times was light-hearted and boyish, and his refinement of nature came out most strongly. So, when he was talking to a lady who pleased and amused him, the combination of raillery and deference in his manner was delightful to see. When my father had several guests, he managed them well, getting a talk with each, or bringing two or three together round his chair....

"My father much enjoyed wandering slowly in the garden with my mother or some of his children, or making one of a party sitting out on a bench on the lawn; he generally sat, however, on the grass, and I remember him often lying under one of the big lime-trees, with his head on the green mound at its foot."

He had great perseverance in his work, and used often to say, "It's dogged as does it;" and "Saving the minutes is the way to get work done." It was his habit to rise early in the morning, and after breakfast work from eight to half-past nine, and then read his letters. At ten or half-past, he went back to his work till twelve. After exercise in the "Sandwalk," a narrow strip of land, one and a half acres in extent, with a gravel walk round it, planted with a variety of trees, in which he watched the birds and squirrels, he lunched and read his newspaper. After this he wrote letters, and about three o'clock rested for a time on the sofa, some of his family reading to him, often a novel,--the work of Walter Scott, George Eliot, Miss Austen, or others. At four he walked again, worked from half-past four till half-past five, dined, and usually spent his evenings, after a game of backgammon with his wife, or hearing her play on the piano, in reading scientific books. Conversation in the evening usually spoiled his rest for the night, but he could do a great amount of work if he kept to his regular routine. In each book, as he read it, he marked passages bearing on his work. In reading a book or pamphlet, he made pencil lines at the side of the page, often adding short remarks, and at the end made a list of the pages marked.

Darwin said of himself: "At no time am I a quick thinker or writer; whatever I have done in science has solely been by long pondering, patience, and industry.... I think that I am superior to the common run of men in noticing things which easily escape attention, and in observing them carefully. My industry has been nearly as great as it could have been in the observation and collection of facts. What is far more important, my love of natural science has been steady and ardent.

"This pure love has, however, been much aided by the ambition to be esteemed by my fellow-naturalists. From my early youth I have had the strongest desire to understand or explain whatever I observed; that is, to group all facts under some general laws.... My habits are methodical, and this has been of not a little use for my particular line of work. Lastly, I have had ample leisure from not having to earn my own bread. Even ill-health, though it has annihilated several years of my life, has saved me from the distractions of society and amusement."

Mr. Darwin was never egotistical, or elated by his great success. He always felt and spoke modestly of his work. In the village people of Down he took a cordial interest, helping to found a Friendly Club, which he served as treasurer for thirty years. He also acted for some years as a county magistrate. The Vicar of Down, Rev. J. Brodie Innes, and Mr. Darwin were firm friends for thirty years, yet, says Darwin, "we never thoroughly agreed on any subject but once, and then we stared hard at each other, and thought one of us must be very ill."

In the hall of the great Natural History Museum in London, a statue of Darwin was placed June 9, 1885, with appropriate addresses.

Darwin's life is a most interesting study. That a boy who seemed in youth to have no special fondness for books, but an especial delight in collecting beetles; who appeared unfitted either for medicine or the church, should come to such a renowned manhood, is remarkable. His perseverance, his industry, his thought, his gentleness, his sunny nature in the midst of suffering, are delightful to contemplate. His books will be an enduring monument. He combined a great intellect and a great heart, which makes the most attractive nature, in either man or woman.

FRANCIS TREVELYAN BUCKLAND.

Most of those whose lives are sketched in this volume lived to be old men; but Frank Buckland, the pet and pride of thousands in England, died in his prime, almost at the beginning of his fame; a man of whose life our "Popular Science Monthly" says, "None more active, varied, and useful is recorded in scientific biography."

He was the oldest son of the Dean of Westminster, Dr. William Buckland, and was born December 17, 1826, at Christ Church, Oxford, of which cathedral his father was canon at that time.

"I was told," says Frank, in later years, "that, soon after my birth, my father and my godfather, the late Sir Francis Chantry, weighed me in the kitchen scales against a leg of mutton, and that I was heavier than the joint provided for the family dinner that day. In honor of my arrival, my father and Sir Francis went into the garden and planted a birch tree. I know the taste of the twigs of that birch tree well. Sir Francis Chantry offered to give me a library. 'What is the use of a library to a child an hour old?' said my father. 'He will live to be sorry for that answer,' said Sir Francis. I never got the library.

"One of my earliest offences in life was eating the end of a carriage candle. For this, the birch rod not being handy, my father put me into a furze bush, and therein I did penance for ten minutes. A furze bush does not make a pleasant lounge when only very thin summer garments are worn."

The father, Dean Buckland, was distinguished as a man of letters, and for his geological research. The mother, as is often the case with sons of genius, was a remarkable woman, who idolized her boy, and who received in return an affection unusual in its intimacy and confidence.

She began to write about him early, in her journal. "At two and a half years of age," she says, "he never forgets either pictures or people he has seen. Four months ago, as well as now, he would have gone through all the natural history books in the Radcliffe Library, without making one error in miscalling a parrot, a duck, a kingfisher, an owl, or a vulture."

On taking him to see the camelopard and kangaroos in Windsor Park, she says, "He ran about with the latter and the other live animals without the least fear, though he got thrown down by them. He is a robust, sturdy child, sharp as a needle, but so volatile that I foresee some trouble in making him fix his attention."

When three and a half, she says, "he certainly is not at all premature; his great excellence is in his disposition, and apparently very strong reasoning powers, and a most tenacious memory as to facts. He is always asking questions, and never forgets the answers he receives, if they are such as he can comprehend. If there is anything he cannot understand, or any word, he won't go on till it has been explained to him. He is always wanting to see everything made, or to know how it is done; there is no end to his questions, and he is never happy unless he sees the relations between cause and effect."

At four he began collecting specimens of natural history. At this time a clergyman brought some fossils to Dr. Buckland. Calling his son, who was playing in the room, the Dean said, "Frankie, what are these?"

"They are the vertebrae of an ichthyosaurus," lisped the child, unable to speak plainly.

Mrs. Buckland gave her boy a small cabinet, which now bears this inscription: "This is the first cabinet I ever had; my mother gave it to me when about four years old, December, 1830. It is the nucleus of all my natural-history work. Please take care of the poor old thing."

"In his early home at Christ Church," says Frank Buckland's brother-in-law, George C. Bompas, in his interesting life of the naturalist, "besides the stuffed creatures, which shared the hall with the rocking-horse, there were cages full of snakes, and of green frogs, in the dining-room, where the sideboard groaned under successive layers of fossils, and the candles stood on ichthyosauri's vertebrae. Guinea-pigs were often running over the table, and, occasionally, the pony, having trotted down the steps from the garden, would push open the dining-room door, and career round the table, with three laughing children on his back; and then, marching through the front door, and down the steps, would continue his course round Tom Quad.

"In the stable yard and large wood-house were the fox, rabbits, guinea-pigs, and ferrets, hawks and owls, the magpie and jackdaw, besides dogs, cats, and poultry, and in the garden was the tortoise (on whose back the children would stand to try its strength), and toads immured in various pots, to test the truth of their supposed life in rock cells."

The boy Frank naturally developed a taste for natural history in the midst of such surroundings. At nine years of age, he was sent to school at Cotterstock, in Northamptonshire, and at twelve was elected scholar of Winchester College.

He tells an interesting experience on his entrance. "Immediately after chapel, the old stager boys all came round the new arrivals, to examine and criticise them. I perfectly recollect one boy, H., to whose special care my poor confiding mother had entrusted her innocent, unsuspecting cub, coming up to me with a most solemn face, and asking me if I had brought with me a copy of the school-book, 'Pempe moron proteron.' I said I had not. 'Then,' said he, 'you must borrow one at once, or the doctor,' i. e. Dr. Moberly, the head master, 'will be sure to flog you to-morrow morning, and your college tutor, one of the praefects, will also lick you.'

"So he sent me to another boy, who said he had _lent_ his 'Pempe moron proteron,' but he passed me on to a third, he on to a fourth; so I was running about all over the college till quite late, in a most terrible panic of mind, till at last a good-natured praefect said, 'Construe it, you little fool.' I had never thought of this before. I saw it directly: _Pempe_ (send) _moron_ (a fool) _proteron_ (further). So the title of this wonderful book, after all, was, 'Send a fool further.' I then went to complain to H.; he only laughed, and shied a Donnegan's Lexicon at my head."

"A few nights afterwards," says Frank, "I dreamt I was wandering on the seashore, and that a crab was pinching my foot. Instantly awakening, I experienced a most frightful pain in my great toe. I bore it for a while, until at last it became so intense that I had to jump up with a howl of agony; all was quiet, but the pull continued, and I had to follow my toe and outstretched leg out of bed. I then found a bit of netted whipcord tight round it; but the whipcord was so ingeniously twisted among the beds, that it was impossible to find out _who had_ pulled it. I returned to bed as savage as a wounded animal. The moment I was settled, the boys all burst into a shout: 'Toe fit tied! By Jove, what a lark!' This barbarous process is called 'toe fit tie' because there is a line in Prosody which begins, 'To fit ti, ut verto verti.' Hence the origin of this Winchester custom."

A school friend says of Frank at this time: "Imagine a short, quick-eyed little boy, with a shock head of reddish brown hair (not much amenable to a hair-brush), a white neck-cloth tied like a piece of rope with no particular bow, and his bands sticking out under either ear as fancy pleased him,--in fact, a boy utterly indifferent to personal appearance, but good-tempered and eccentric, with a small museum in his sleeve or cupboard, sometimes a snake, or a pet mouse, or a guinea-pig, or even a hedge-hog. In the summer he would be always in the hedgerows, after birds, weasels, or mice, or in the water-meadows, after crayfish, tomculls, and other fish which hide under stones.... In fact, he was a born naturalist."

Another says: "Frank set up a sort of amateur dispensary or hospital. He had a patient or two. One man I remember, with a bad hand, who used to come down to College Gate at twelve o'clock to consult him and be experimented upon. In his toys (cupboard) he had various bottles and specimens, one very highly treasured possession being a three-legged chicken.

"His own natural disposition was of the sweetest and gentlest. I never saw him in a passion, though he used to get a good deal teased at one time for his untidiness. But he always had a bright smile amidst it all, and was ready to do anything for anybody immediately after. One thing used to strike me very much about him, and that was his exceeding love for his mother. Boys are generally reticent upon this point, but Frank seemed never tired of telling me about his, and how much he owed her....

"In school hours he was a painstaking and conscientious worker, never leaving his lessons or preparing his task quicker or better than when he had some pet, a dormouse or sometimes a snake, twisting and wriggling inside his college waistcoat, which, having found its way out at his boots, would be carefully replaced under the waistcoat, to go through the same journey again."

While at Winchester, Frank determined to become a surgeon, and chose as a parting gift from one of his tutors, instead of Goldsmith's poems, "Graham's Domestic Medicine." At his request, his parents sent him a lancet, with which he bled his college mates, if they were courageous enough to submit to the operation, offering each one sixpence as an inducement. Nevertheless, when, in vacation, he witnessed an amputation at the Infirmary, he fainted.

When Frank left Winchester, Bishop Moberly said, "I always had the utmost satisfaction in him as a school-boy; and I look back with very great regard to his simple, earnest character, and his devotion to the studies which have made him so well known. To me he was just what I always found him, full of curious information, excellently kind-tempered and affectionate."

In 1844, at the age of eighteen, Frank entered Christ Church, Oxford. Here he turned the court between his college rooms and the canon's gardens into a menagerie. He owned a young bear, Tiglath Pileser, Jacko the monkey, an eagle, a jackal, besides marmots, guinea-pigs, squirrels, and dormice, an adder and other snakes, tortoises, green frogs and a chameleon. Skeletons and stuffed specimens were numerous.

Many of these pets strayed away. The marmot got into the chapter-house, and the eagle stationed himself in the chapel doorway, and attacked those who wished to enter.