Order of the proceedings at the Darwin celebration held at Cambridge, June 22-June 24, 1909 : with a sketch of Darwin's life.
- University of Cambridge
- Date:
- 1909
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Order of the proceedings at the Darwin celebration held at Cambridge, June 22-June 24, 1909 : with a sketch of Darwin's life. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![enlarged during the summer of 1844 into one of 230 pages, which I had fairly copied out and still [1876] possess\” Sept, 14. Settled at the village of Down in Kent. (Plate VII.) “ My life goes on like clockwork, and I am fixed on the spot where I shall end it.” Darwin’s house lies 18 miles from London, close to the village of Down, which stands in a solitary upland country, 500 or 600 feet above sea-level,—a country with little natural beauty, but possessing a certain charm in the shaws, or straggling strips of wood, capping the chalky banks and looking down upon the quiet ploughed lands of the valleys. The village, of a few hundred inhabitants, consists of three little streets of cottages meeting by the flint-built church. It is a place where new-comers are seldom seen, and where the names occurring in the old church registers are still borne by the villagers. “ Its chief merit is its extreme rurality. I think I was never in a more perfectly quiet country.” (1843.) The Sandwalk (Plate VIII) was planted by my father with a variety of trees, such as hazel, alder, lime, hornbeam, birch, privet, and dogwood, and with a long line of hollies all down the exposed side. Here he took a certain number of turns every day, and used to count them by means of a heap of flints, one of which he kicked aside each time he passed. The Sandwalk was our play-ground as children, and here we continually saw my father as he walked round. He liked to see what we were doing, and was ever ready to sympathise in any fun that was going on. With regard to the Sandwalk, in connection with our father, his children s earliest recollections coincide with their latest,—so unchanging were his habits. Adapted from Francis Darwin’s Reminiscences in Life and Letters. Publication of The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs; being Part I. of the Geology of the Voyage of the Beagle. “ I wish that some doubly rich millionaire would take it into his head to have borings made in some of the Pacific and Indian atolls, and bring home cores for slicing from a depth of 500 or 600 feet. C. Darwin, 1881. “ Though the ‘ doubly rich millionaire ’ has not been forthcoming, the energy, in England, of Professor Sollas, and in New South Wales of Professor Anderson Stuart, served to set on foot a project, which, aided at first by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and after- wards taken up jointly by the Royal Society, the New South Wales Government, and the Admiralty, has led to the most definite and conclusive ^ A Volume containing both these Essays will be published by the Cambridge University Press in June of this year. 3](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2898383x_0037.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
