Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 March 1883 — Darwin’s Last Years. [ARTICLE]

Darwin’s Last Years.

None of Darwin’s works has excited greater interest or more bitter controversy than that on man; and the correctioh of the numerous reprints, and of a final enlarged edition in 1874, was found to be so laborious a task as to convince him that any such extensive literary works as those projected and announced six years previously must be finally abandoned. This, however, by no means implied cessation from work. Observation and experiment were the delight and relaxation of Darwin’s life, and he now continued and supplemented those numerous researches on plants we have already referred to. A new edition of an earlier work on the “Movements of Climbing Plants” appeared in 1875; a thick volume on “Insectivorous Plants” in the same year; “Cross and Self-Fertilization” in 1876; the “Forms of Flowers” in 1877; the “Movements of Plants,” embodying much original research, in 1880; and his remarkable little book on “Earth-worms” in 1881. This last work is highly characteristic of the author. In 1837 he had contributed to the Geological Society a short paper on the formation of vegetable mold by the agency of worms. For more than forty years this subject of his early studies was kept in view; experiments were made, in one case involving the keeping a field untouched for thirty years,—and every opportunity was taken of collecting facts and making fresh observations, the final result being tp elevate one of the humblest and most despised of the animal creation to the position of "an important agent in the preparation of the earth for the use of the higher animals and of man.—Century Magazine.