e of his residence being at
Down--from 1853 to 1864. He even made contributions on scientific
questions after these dinners. In a letter to Hooker he states that he
was deeply interested in the reforms of the Royal Society, which the
Club was founded to promote. He says also that he had arranged to come
to town every Club day "and then my head, I think, will allow me on an
average to go to every other meeting. But it is grievous how often any
change knocks me up." ("L.L." II. pages 42, 43.)

Of the years 1837 and 1838 Darwin himself says they were "the most
active ones which I ever spent, though I was occasionally unwell, and
so lost some time... I also went a little into society." ("L.L." I. pages
67, 68.) But of the four years from 1839 to 1842 he has to confess sadly
"I did less scientific work, though I worked as hard as I could, than
during any other equal length of time in my life. This was owing to
frequently recurring unwellness, and to one long and serious illness."
("L.L." I. page 69.)

Darwin's work at the Geological Society did not by any means engage the
whole of his energies, during the active years 1837 and 1838. In June of
the latter year, leaving town in somewhat bad health, he found himself
at Edinburgh again, and engaged in examining the Salisbury Craigs, in a
very different spirit to that excited by Jameson's discourse. ("L.L."
I. page 290.) Proceeding to the Highlands he then had eight days of hard
work at the famous "Parallel Roads of Glen Roy", being favoured with
glorious weather.

He says of the writing of the paper on the subject--the only memoir
contributed by Darwin to the Royal Society, to which he had been
recently elected--that it was "one of the most difficult and instructive
tasks I was ever engaged on." The paper extends to 40 quarto pages
and is illustrated by two plates. Though it is full of the records
of careful observation and acute reasoning, yet the theory of marine
beaches which he propounded was, as he candidly admitted in after years
("M.L." II page 188.), altogether wrong. The alternative lake-theory he
found himself unable to accept at the time, for he could not understand
how barriers could be formed at successive levels across the valleys;
and until the following year, when the existence of great glaciers
in the district was proved by the researches of Agassiz, Buckland and
others, the difficulty appeared to him an insuperable one. Although
Darwin said of this paper in