INTRODUCTION

Summary

The library of Charles Darwin has now found a permanent home in his own University, and it is perhaps appropriate that it should be in the Botany School, since it was a Cambridge professor of Botany who, more than any one man, determined his career as a naturalist.

The collection is not identical with that at Down. Thus the books he wrote and some few others from Down are in my own possession. There are also a few books of mine which, for the sake of convenience, are kept in the Darwin library: these are marked with an asterisk in the catalogue. Darwin's pamphlets are not included in the catalogue though part of them are on the shelves along side his books. The rest of the pamphlets are in the building and a manuscript catalogue of the whole is in my possession. His habit was to treat each pamphlet as a book, to number them and keep them in order on a shelf. But he was not consistent in the treatment of the publications received and many pamphlet-like volumes occur among his books.

He hardly ever had a book bound, and the collection retains to a great degree its original ragged appearance. But some binding has necessarily been done, thus the copy of H. Müller's Befruchtung which he preserved “from complete dissolution by putting a metal clip over the back” has now received more solid protection.