ly valuable. It was good for me to
live under sharp discipline; to be down on the realities of existence by
living on bare necessaries; to find out how extremely well worth living
life seemed to be when one woke up from a night's rest on a soft plank,
with the sky for canopy and cocoa and weevilly biscuit the sole prospect
for breakfast; and, more especially, to learn to work for the sake of
what I got for myself out of it, even if it all went to the bottom and I
along with it. My brother officers were as good fellows as sailors ought
to be and generally are, but, naturally, they neither knew nor cared
anything about my pursuits, nor understood why I should be so zealous
in pursuit of the objects which my friends, the middies,[10] christened
"Buffons," after the title conspicuous on a volume of the Suites a
Buffon,[11] which stood on my shelf in the chart room.

During the four years of our absence, I sent home communication after
communication to the "Linnean Society,"[12] with the same result as that
obtained by Noah when he sent the raven out of his ark. Tired at last
of hearing nothing about them, I determined to do or die, and in 1849
I drew up a more elaborate paper and forwarded it to the Royal
Society.[13] This was my dove, if I had only known it. But owing to the
movements of the ship, I heard nothing of that either until my return
to England in the latter end of the year 1850, when I found that it was
printed and published, and that a huge packet of separate copies awaited
me. When I hear some of my young friends complain of want of sympathy
and encouragement, I am inclined to think that my naval life was not the
least valuable part of my education.

Three years after my return were occupied by a battle between my
scientific friends on the one hand and the Admiralty on the other, as
to whether the latter ought, or ought not, to act up to the spirit of a
pledge they had given to encourage officers who had done scientific
work by contributing to the expense of publishing mine. At last the
Admiralty, getting tired, I suppose, cut short the discussion by
ordering me to join a ship, which thing I declined to do, and as
Rastignac,[14] in the Pere Goriot [15] says to Paris, I said to London
"a nous deux." I desired to obtain a Professorship of either Physiology
or Comparative Anatomy, and as vacancies occurred I applied, but in
vain. My friend, Professor Tyndall,[16] and I were candidates at the
same time, he for th