Sir Francis Darwin

“ It is now in its freshest youth, and the careless way in which the young stems toss themselves hither and thither gives an impression of endless living things dancing with complete abandon on the hedge as on an airy floor. The traveller’s joy climbs by seizing hold of the branches of plants more solid than itself. It grips them with its leaf-stalks, which serve as tendrils and support the weakling stem aloft in the clear air. ”

“ Mrs Sydney, n.d.—In a French diligence was “a sensible man, with that propensity which the French have for explaining things which do not require explanation. He explained to me, for instance, what he did when he found coffee too strong; he put water in it!”
Lady Holland, 6th Nov. 1827.—“Jeffrey has been here with his adjectives, who always travel with him. His throat is giving way; so much wine goes down it, so many million words leap over it, how can it rest? Pray make him a judge; he is a truly great man, and is very heedless of his own interests.” ”

“ I should like to express my appreciation of the honour done me in asking me to give the first Galton lecture. In many ways I am a bad choice, since I have had no share in his science of eugenics, neither has my research-work been directly connected with evolution. I can only hope that in consideration of my delight in the fibre and flavour of Galton’s mind, with its youth, its charm of humour, and its ever-springing originality and acuteness,—I say that I hope these considerations may excuse me for having undertaken an office for which I am in so many ways unfitted. ”

“ I only insist on these familiar facts in order to show that the wonderful romance inherent in the great subject of evolution also illumines that cycle of birth and death to which existing plant-names are due. ”

“ I have been compelled to use the words ‘science’ and ‘scientific’ because these terms have become firmly adherent to a group of subjects such as Physics, Chemistry, Geology, Botany, etc., and cannot now be detached from them. Unfortunately ‘scientific’ is used in another sense as implying accuracy of experimental method and in deduction from results. So that in calling ourselves scientific men we run the risk of seeming to claim a monopoly of method, as though we pretended to be somehow superior to the trained workers in other branches. ”

“ As one who loves wind-instruments, I like to think that the flutes, oboes, and clarinets are the flowers of my vernal orchestra, decorating the great mass of stringed instruments with streaks and flames of colour.
In real music, we cannot say why certain sounds make an appropriate opening for a symphony ”

“ It seems to me that the education of one’s youth becomes clear to one in middle life and old age; and that what one sees in this retrospect may be worth some rough record and some sort of criticism. One may, of course, be mistaken about what was bad and what was good in one’s training. But the experience of the pupil is, at the least, one aspect of the question. And I think that the memories of how we were taught is something much more definite and vivid, something that can be more easily made interesting to one’s readers, than the generalised experience gained as a teacher. ”

“ The spring is the happiest season for those who love plants, who delight to watch and record the advent of old friends as the great procession of green leaves and beautiful flowers unwinds itself with a glory which no familiarity can tarnish. ”

“ It is not difficult to describe the ideals of science, but it is only too easy to fall short of them. It is easy for instance to become a sectarian, to belong to a school, and to be literally incapable of fairness towards the opposition. This was plainly seen at the incoming of evolution, and it was one of the many glories of Sir Charles Lyell that he could accept the ‘Origin of Species,’ and that, in the words of Hooker, he could under-pin his work with an evolutionary foundation and find his edifice stronger than ever. ”

“ The lower country is all pasture, where we can wander at will, and delight in the many beautiful trees: the fresh green elms, the vernal yellow of the oak (which lingers in varying degrees behind some of its companions, but does not deserve Tolstoy’s epithet ‘maussade’) , and the grey anatomy of the timid ash, whose black buds are still getting up their courage. We do not owe the trees in the meadows to landowners with a taste for natural beauty, but to the cattle that must have shade. ”

“ I could no more resist this on Sunday or yesterday than a man can dispense with food. . . . Whoever is devoted to an art must be content to deliver himself wholly up to it, and find his recompense in it. I am grieved if you suspect me of not wanting to see you, but I can’t help it; I must go my way whether or no” (3rd April 1855) .
In September 1855 he was at Folkestone, whence he wrote to Mrs Watson about Little Dorrit, to which he at the time intended to give the name Nobody’s Fault: “The new story is everywhere—heaving in the sea, flying with the clouds, blowing in the wind. ”

“ The astronomer measures out his work, not by miles, but by the inconceivable distance that light can travel in a year. The man who studies bacteria measures by the micron, 25,000 of which go to the inch. To me there is more fascination in the very small than in the other extreme. It is wonderful to think that a plant—a big tree for instance—is made up of countless millions of cells, each of which was built by a minute protoplasmic body, which Huxley has compared to a delicate Ariel imprisoned like Shakespeare’s sprite in an oak-tree. ”

“ Mr Galpin has written an admirable book on old musical instruments. His knowledge, which is first hand, is the harvest of many years’ research; and, like the best type of learned authors, he has the power of sharing his knowledge with the ignorant. ”

“ The great revolution that breaks out in the spring, when the store-houses of the plant pour nutriment into the numberless awakening buds is a miracle annually repeated in the endless procession of life. ”

“ To those who have never made experiments on plants it may seem that ‘picturesque’ is an odd term to apply to laboratory methods. But to an experimentalist the adjective does not seem overstrained. There is not merely the pleasure of seeing a prediction verified—that may be experienced in more everyday matters. There is a peculiar delight in the discovery of a method of revealing some detail in the natural history of living things. I remember vividly the pleasure which I felt when I first tried the experiment on Sorghum, described in the essay on the Movements of Plants in this volume. ”

“ The point on which I wish to insist is, that it is impossible to explain on any theory of the direct action of gravity why the three orders of roots have three distinct modes of growth. They may remind us of three generations, grandfather, father, and son, all of one blood and yet behaving towards the universe in three distinct ways—a fact not unknown in human society. ”

“ I think, too, that the human interest of science should always be encouraged. I mean that those classical experiments, by which great men have advanced human knowledge, should be shown: and performed moreover by the original methods, e.g. the discoveries of Black, Priestley and Cavendish.
After all, the real fun of science begins when one finds out something that was not known before. This is what is rather pompously called original research. It is interesting to see in my father’s life how the sporting instinct gave way to the love of discovery. ”

“ I now pass on to a different subject, the all-important process on which the life of green plants depends, an act therefore by which our own existence and that of all other animals is conditioned. I mean the process known as assimilation. This is the truly miraculous feat of using as a source of food the carbonic acid gas (CO2) which exists in minute quantities in the atmosphere. The plant is in fact a carbon-catching machine, and the machine is driven by the energy of the sun, and can therefore only work in light. ”

“ We ask ourselves why hollow cylinders occur so commonly in vegetable architecture. That rough teacher, the struggle for life, has taught plants that a tube is, mechanically speaking, the best way of arranging a limited amount of formative or building material. The hemlock or the reed can thus make stalks of ample strength and at comparatively slight cost. There is romance in the fact that plants made tubular stems to their own private profit for unnumbered ages before the coming of man: the hollow reeds waiting all these aeons till Pan should come and make them musical. ”

“ Not only does the student of to-day get good practical teaching, but he has the great advantage of being under professors who are generally engaged in original work. And if a man can afford the time to stay up after his degree, he is encouraged and helped to undertake research. If practical teaching is the foundation, the protoplasm as it were, of scientific education, I am sure that original work is its soul or spirit. ”

“ I am glad to think that there are points in which science, literature, and art are equally excellent—namely, in giving to mankind some of the deepest pleasures of which he is capable, in making him realise the wonder, the beauty and the romance of the world. I spoke of the power of science in knitting together isolated facts into a p. 148theory. And such a theory may become so all embracing that it is called a law of nature. Those great generalisations, the laws of gravity and the laws of evolution, or the laws of chemical combination, have a beauty and dignity which appeal to everyone. ”

“ Gravitation is nothing more than a sign-post or signal to the plant—a signal which the plant interprets in the way best suited to its success in the struggle for life, just as what we see or hear gives us signals of changes in the exterior world by which we regulate our conduct. ”

“ One would like to know more of the conception of science formed by the unscientific. They are probably unaware that science is eminently practical in asserting that only to be true which rests on wide and accurate generalisation. It is also practical wisdom to hold, as science does, that truth is temporary and relative, and is in fact merely the best conclusion that can be drawn in the present state of knowledge. To many people science is wearisome and somewhat ridiculous, and these qualities appear in the naturalist of fiction. ”

“ This is obvious, but we cannot say how far the bravery of the tune puts strength into tired legs, and this would be incitement,—and how far it is the unappeasable rhythm that forces the men to keep going, and this may perhaps be called regulation. There are occasions when the trumpet comes as a signal to troops waiting to make some sublime effort, and where the fierce imperious sound has a lift and a sting which perhaps no pre-concerted signal of a weaker type could give. ”

“ Or we can watch under the microscope minute free-swimming plants rushing across the field of view, all one way, like a flock of little green sheep that we can drive to and fro with a ray of light for a sheep-dog. ”

“ The domestic and intimate parts of life are the most lastingly happy, and thus it is that an imaginary existence, which in some moods seems to be unbearably humdrum, harmonises with the best parts of our own life. The quiet winds that blow through Miss Austen’s imagined land cannot turn windmills or overset tall trees, but they can set going those tunelike chains of simple experiences written on our memories by the quiet and happy parts of life. ”

“ I have never got over the want of fluent French and German, and I resent the fact that I should be condemned to feel like a child or a boor in the presence of foreigners. We are taught Latin and Greek because, as we are assured, they introduce us to the finest literature in the world. To most boys they do nothing of the kind, and are an intolerable burden. French and German taught by the oral methods really do introduce us to whole nations of minds that are otherwise cut off from us ”