The Many Moods of Darwin Revealed Through His Letters

May 7, 1855

On this day, Darwin wrote to William Darwin Fox:

I am rather low today about all my experiments —

everything has been going wrong —

the fan-tails have picked the feathers out of the Pouters in their Journey home —

the fish at the Zoological Gardens, after eating seeds, would spit them all out again —

Seeds will sink in salt-water —

all nature is perverse & will not do as I wish it,

& just at present I wish I had the old Barnacles to work at & nothing new.

Twenty-three years later - on this day - in 1878, Darwin wrote to Thomas Henry Farrer, 1st Baron Farrer:

At present, I care for nothing in this wide world except the biology of seedling plants.