.

Yesterday, after having been on his legs from eight in the morning to three in the afternoon, visiting the frigates and transports, even to going down to the lower compartments among the horses, he rode on horseback for three hours, and, as he afterwards said to me, to rest himself."] [Footnote 1151: The starting-point of the great discoveries of Darwin is the physical, detailed description he made in his study of animals and plants, as living; during the whole course of life, through so many difficulties and subject to a fierce competition.

This study is wholly lacking in the ordinary zoologist or botanist, whose mind is busy only with anatomical preparations or collections of plants.

In every science, the difficulty lies in describing in a nutshell, using significant examples, the real object, just as it exists before us, and its true history.

Claude Bernard one day remarked to me, "We shall know physiology when we are able to follow step by step a molecule of carbon or azote in the body of a dog, give its history, and describe its passage from its entrance to its exit."] [Footnote 1152: Thibaudeau, "Memoires sur le Consulat," 204.