rong intellectual man and an acute and
deep observer." The places visited in the course of the Beagle's voyage,
concerning each of which Darwin has something to say, were the Cape Verd
Islands, St. Paul's Rocks, Fernando Noronha, parts of South America,
Tierra del Fuego, the Galapagos Islands, the Falkland Islands, Tahiti,
New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, Keeling Island, the Maldives,
Mauritius, St. Helena, Ascension. The most important discoveries
recorded in the book--also treated at greater length in special
scientific memoirs--are the explanation of the ring-like form of coral
islands, the geological structure of St. Helena and other islands, and
the relation of the living inhabitants--great tortoises, lizards, birds,
and various plants--of the various islands of the Galapagos Archipelago
to those of South America.

In 1839 (shortly before the publication of his journal) Darwin married
his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, daughter of Josiah Wedgwood of Maer,
and in 1842 they took the country-house and little property of Down near
Orpington in Kent, which remained his home and the seat of his labors
for forty years; that is, until his death on April 19th, 1882. In a
letter to his friend Captain Fitzroy of the Beagle, written in 1846,
Darwin says, "My life goes on like clockwork, and I am fixed on the spot
where I shall end it." Happily, he was possessed of ample private
fortune, and never undertook any teaching work nor gave any of his
strength to the making of money. He was able to devote himself entirely
to the studies in which he took delight; and though suffering from weak
health due to a hereditary form of dyspepsia, he presented the rare
spectacle of a man of leisure more fully occupied, more absorbed in
constant and exhausting labors, than many a lawyer, doctor, professor,
or man of letters. His voyage seems to have satisfied once for all his
need for traveling, and his absences from Down were but few and brief
during the rest of his life. Here most of his children were born, five
sons and three daughters. One little girl died in childhood; the rest
grew up around him and remained throughout his life in the closest terms
of intimacy and affection with him and their mother. Here he carried on
his experiments in greenhouse, garden, and paddock; here he collected
his library and wrote his great books. He became a man of
well-considered habits and method, carefully arranging his day's
occupation so as to give so many