"Alexander Von Humboldt used to take pleasure in recounting how
powerfully Forster's pictures of the South Sea Islands and St.
Pierre's illustrations of Nature had provoked his ardour for travel
and influenced his career as a scientific investigator. How much
more impressively must the works of Dr. Erasmus Darwin, with their
reiterated foreshadowing of a more lofty interpretation of Nature,
have affected his grandson, who in his youth assuredly approached
them with the devotion due to the works of a renowned poet." {43}


I then came upon a passage common to both German and English, which
in its turn was followed in the English by the sub-apologetic
paragraph which I had been struck with on first reading, and which
was not in the German, its place being taken by a much longer passage
which had no place in the English. A little farther on I was amused
at coming upon the following, and at finding it wholly transformed in
the supposed accurate translation


"How must this early and penetrating explanation of rudimentary
organs have affected the grandson when he read the poem of his
ancestor! But indeed the biological remarks of this accurate
observer in regard to certain definite natural objects must have
produced a still deeper impression upon him, pointing, as they do, to
questions which hay attained so great a prominence at the present
day; such as, Why is any creature anywhere such as we actually see it
and nothing else? Why has such and such a plant poisonous juices?
Why has such and such another thorns? Why have birds and fishes
light-coloured breasts and dark backs, and, Why does every creature
resemble the one from which it sprung?" {44a}