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THE GREAT DARWIN DEAD

THE AUTHOR OF THE "ORIGIN OF SPECIES" PASSES AWAY.

DYING AT HIS RESIDENCE IN ENGLAND THURSDAY AFTER A BRIEF ILLNESS. BRIEF SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF ONE OF THE GREATEST MEN EVER PRODUCED.

A cable dispatch from London announces that Darwin died Thursday at his residence, Down House, near Orpington. He had been ill for some days and was thought to be recovering, but he had a relapse on Thursday and never rallied.

Charles Robert Darwin was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin, the author of the celebrated "Botanic Garden" and the foreshadower of the Darwinian theory, and was born at Shrewsbury, in England, February 12, 1809. After studying at the grammar school in his native town, at the University of Edinburgh and at Christ's college, Cambridge, he took his last degree of Master of Arts in 1831, and set sail as voluntary naturalist in the ship Beagle on an exploring expedition around the world. Returning in 1836 he published three years later an account of the discoveries he had made in geology and natural history during the cruise, the same being the third and last volume of a narrative of the whole cruise.

In 1834 he had, during his absence from England, been elected a member of the Royal Society. In 1839 he married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, granddaughter of Josiah Wedgwood, the celebrated English potter. In 1840-42 he edited the "Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle," and published a treatise on "Coral Reefs," in 1844 appeared his work on  "Volcanic Islands," and two years later his "Geological Observations on South America." In 1851 and 1853 appeared two volumes from his pen called a "Monograph of the Family Cirripedia," and soon afterward two volumes on the fossil species of the same class. In 1853 the Royal Society awarded to him the royal medal, and in 1859 he received the Wollaston medal from the Geological Society. During the latter year he published his "Origin of Species."

In 1862 appeared his work on the "Fertilization of Orchids;" in 1865 his "Habits and Movements of Climbing Plants in 1867 "Domesticated Animals and Cultivated Plants," in 1871 his "Descent of Man," and in the next year "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals." His last work, published in 1881, was "Earthworms," in which it was shown that they have been almost as efficacious in changing the aspect of the earth within historical times as coral insects in building the islands of the sea. Early last year he published a volume on "The Power of Movement in Plants," in preparing which he was assisted by his son, Francis Darwin.

He was a member of many learned societies, and in 1878 was made a member of the Berlin Academy. Many papers by him were published in the journals of these societies and in reviews. His brother, Erasmus Darwin died last summer at the age of 77. It was to him that Carlyle devoted one of the few pleasant pages in the "Reminiscences."