Life of Charles Darwin. Bettany George Thomas

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and showed an active interest in its affairs throughout life, being elected a member of its council in 1838. As early as January 4, 1836, a memoir based on insects sent home by Darwin from Chiloe, was read before the Society by Charles Babington, now Professor of Botany at Cambridge.

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Mr. Grant Allen (“Darwin,” p. 42) states that Darwin observed sixty-seven distinct organic forms in the fine dust which fell on deck. It was Ehrenberg who determined these organisms in dust sent to him by Darwin, and four out of five of the packets of dust sent to Ehrenberg were given to Darwin by Lyell (Darwin’s Journal, second edition, p. 5).

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Mr. John Murray’s views, derived from the experience acquired in the voyage of the Challenger, and published in 1880, tend to modify Darwin’s conclusions to some extent. Mr. Murray says that it is now shown that many submarine mountains exist, which are usually volcanic, and which, being built upon by various forms of shell-bearing animals, could be raised to such a level that ordinary corals could build upon them. He concludes that probably all atolls are seated on submarine volcanoes, and thus it is not necessary to suppose such extensive and long-continued subsidences as Darwin suggested. This view is also in harmony with Dana’s views of the great antiquity and permanence of the great ocean basin. See “The Structure and Origin of Reefs and Islands.” By John Murray; Proc. Roy. Soc., Edin., x. 505-18 (abstract); also Nature, xxii. 351-5.