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chalk-flints, which form Keston, Hayes and Addington Commons. Near Down
a rounded chalk-flint is a rarity, though some few do occur; and I have
not yet seen a stone of distant origin, which makes a difference--at
least to geological eyes--in the very aspect of the country, compared
with all the northern counties.
The chalk-flints decay externally, which, according to Berzelius ("Edin.
New Phil. Journal," late number), is owing to the flints containing a
small proportion of alkali; but, besides this external decay, the whole
body is affected by exposure of a few years, so that they will not break
with clean faces for building.
This bed of red clay, which renders the country very slippery in the
winter months from October to April, does not cover the sides of the
valleys; these, when ploughed, show the white chalk, which tint shades
away lower in the valley, as insensibly as a colour laid on by a
painter's brush.
Nearly all the land is ploughed, and is often left fallow, which gives
the country a naked red look, or not unfrequently white, from a covering
of chalk laid on by the farmers. Nobody seems at all aware on what
principle fresh chalk laid on land abounding with lime does it any good.
This, however, is said to have been the practice of the country ever
since the period of the Romans, and at present the many white pits on
the hill sides, which so frequently afford a picturesque contrast with
the overhanging yew trees, are all quarried for this purpose.
The number of different kinds of bushes in the hedgerows, entwined
by traveller's joy and the bryonies, is conspicuous compared with the
hedges of the northern counties.
March 25th [1844?].--The first period of vegetation, and the banks are
clothed with pale-blue violets to an extent I have never seen equalled,
and with primroses. A few days later some of the copses were beautifully
enlivened by Ranunculus auricomus, wood anemones, and a white Stellaria.
Again, subsequently, large areas were brilliantly blue with bluebells.
The flowers are here very beautiful, and the number of flowers; [and]
the darkness of the blue of the common little Polygala almost equals it
to an alpine gentian.
There are large tracts of woodland, [cut down] about once every ten
years; some of these enclosures seem to be very ancient. On the south
side of Cudham Wood a beech hedge has grown to Brobdignagian size, with
several of the huge branches crossing each other and firmly grafted
together.
Larks abound here, and their songs sound most agreeably on all sides;
nightingales are common. Judging from an odd cooing note, something like
the purring of a cat, doves are very common in the woods.
June 25th.--The sainfoin fields are now of the most beautiful pink, and
from the number of hive-bees frequenting them the humming noise is quite
extraordinary. This humming is rather deeper than the humming overhead,
which has been continuous and loud during all these last hot days over
almost every field. The labourers here say it is made by "air-bees,"
and one man, seeing a wild bee in a flower different from the hive kind,
remarked: "That, no doubt, is an air-bee." This noise is considered as a
sign of settled fair weather.
CHAPTER 1.II.--EVOLUTION, 1844-1858.
(Chapter II./1. Since the publication of the "Life and Letters," Mr.
Huxley's obituary notice of Charles Darwin has appeared. (Chapter II./2.
"Proc. R. Soc." volume 44, 1888, and "Collected Essays (Darwiniana),"
page 253, 1899.) This masterly paper is, in our opinion, the finest
of the great series of Darwinian essays which we owe to Mr. Huxley.
We would venture to recommend it to our readers as the best possible
introduction to these pages. There is, however, one small point in which
we differ from Mr. Huxley. In discussing the growth of Mr. Darwin's
evolutionary views, Mr. Huxley quotes from the autobiography (Chapter
II./3. "Life and Letters," I., page 82. Some account of the origin of
his evolutionary views is given in a letter to Jenyns (Blomefield),
"Life and Letters," II. page 34.) a passage in which the writer
describes the deep impression made on his mind by certain groups of
facts observed in South America. Mr. Huxley goes on: "The facts to which
reference is here made were, without doubt, eminently fitted to attract
the attention of a philosophical thinker; but, until the relations
of the existing with the extinct species, and of the species of the
different geographical areas with one another, were determined with some
exactness, they afforded but an unsafe foundation for speculation.
It was not possible that this determination should have been effected
before the return of the "Beagle" to England; and thus the date
(Chapter II./4. The date in question is July 1837, when he "opened first
note-book on Transmutation of Species.') which Darwin (writing in 1837)
assigns to the dawn of the new light which was rising in his mind,
becomes intelligible." This seems to us inconsistent with Darwin's
own statement that it was especially the character of the "species on
Galapagos Archipelago" which had impressed him. (Chapter II./5. See
"Life and Letters," I., page 276.) This must refer to the zoological
specimens: no doubt he was thinking of the birds, but these he had
himself collected in 1835 (Chapter II./6. He wrote in his "Journal,"
page 394, "My attention was first thoroughly aroused, by comparing
together the numerous specimens shot by myself and several other
parties on board," etc.), and no accurate determination of the forms was
necessary to impress on him the remarkable characteristic species of the
different islands. We agree with Mr. Huxley that 1837 is the date of
the "new light which was rising in his mind." That the dawn did not come
sooner seems to us to be accounted for by the need of time to produce so
great a revolution in his conceptions. We do not see that Mr. Huxley's
supposition as to the effect of the determination of species, etc., has
much weight. Mr. Huxley quotes a letter from Darwin to Zacharias, "But
I did not become convinced that species were mutable until, I think, two
or three years [after 1837] had elapsed" (see Letter 278). This
passage, which it must be remembered was written in 1877, is all but
irreconcilable with the direct evidence of the 1837 note-book. A series
of passages are quoted from it in the "Life and Letters," Volume II.,
pages 5 et seq., and these it is impossible to read without feeling that
he was convinced of immutability. He had not yet attained to a clear
idea of Natural Selection, and therefore his views may not have had,
even to himself, the irresistible convincing power they afterwards
gained; but that he was, in the ordinary sense of the word, convinced
of the truth of the doctrine of evolution we cannot doubt. He thought it
"almost useless" to try to prove the truth of evolution until the cause
of change was discovered. And it is natural that in later life he should
have felt that conviction was wanting till |