new a little
about many subjects. Dr. Coldstream was a very different young man,
prim, formal, highly religious, and most kind-hearted; he afterwards
published some good zoological articles. A third young man was Hardie,
who would, I think, have made a good botanist, but died early in
India. Lastly, Dr. Grant, my senior by several years, but how I became
acquainted with him I cannot remember; he published some first-rate
zoological papers, but after coming to London as Professor in University
College, he did nothing more in science, a fact which has always been
inexplicable to me. I knew him well; he was dry and formal in manner,
with much enthusiasm beneath this outer crust. He one day, when we were
walking together, burst forth in high admiration of Lamarck and his
views on evolution. I listened in silent astonishment, and as far as
I can judge without any effect on my mind. I had previously read the
'Zoonomia' of my grandfather, in which similar views are maintained, but
without producing any effect on me. Nevertheless it is probable that the
hearing rather early in life such views maintained and praised may
have favoured my upholding them under a different form in my 'Origin of
Species.' At this time I admired greatly the 'Zoonomia;' but on reading
it a second time after an interval of ten or fifteen years, I was much
disappointed; the proportion of speculation being so large to the facts
given.

Drs. Grant and Coldstream attended much to marine Zoology, and I often
accompanied the former to collect animals in the tidal pools, which I
dissected as well as I could. I also became friends with some of the
Newhaven fishermen, and sometimes accompanied them when they trawled
for oysters, and thus got many specimens. But from not having had any
regular practice in dissection, and from possessing only a wretched
microscope, my attempts were very poor. Nevertheless I made one
interesting little discovery, and read, about the beginning of the year
1826, a short paper on the subject before the Plinian Society. This was
that the so-called ova of Flustra had the power of independent movement
by means of cilia, and were in fact larvae. In another short paper I
showed that the little globular bodies which had been supposed to be
the young state of Fucus loreus were the egg-cases of the wormlike
Pontobdella muricata.

The Plinian Society was encouraged and, I believe, founded by Professor
Jameson: it consisted of students and me