CHAPTER II 



EARLY INTEREST IN NATURAL HISTORY 



MAGDALENE in the " forties ' was a small college, and 

 very little is known of Newton's undergraduate days. 

 He twice won the College prize for an English essay,* and 

 it is said that on one occasion he coxed a winning four. 

 The only other event that is known of this period is that 

 he assisted his friend Charles Pierrepont Cleaver and two 

 or three other undergraduates in executing a painted 

 window for the College Chapel. In his second year he 

 was elected a member of the Pitt Club, which he con- 

 tinued to use as a convenient place for writing letters 

 during more than half a century. Although he was a 

 very fair classical scholar when he went up to Cambridge, 

 the Classical Tripos, which in those days was only open 

 to men who had already taken honours in Mathematics, 

 did not appeal to him. The Natural Sciences Tripos 

 was then in its infancy (the first examination was held in 

 1851), but he was not attracted by Chemistry and 

 Physics, which were the most important subjects in the 

 school at that time. He made the acquaintance of 

 Henslow, the famous Professor of Botany, and long 

 enjoyed his friendship ; his tastes, however, already 

 inclined him strongly towards the other branch of 

 Biology, and he regretted afterwards that he had never 

 become even a passable botanist. He graduated on 

 March 10, 1852, but as that day fell after Ash Wednesday 

 he was in the phraseology of the day a Baccalaureus 



* His nephews and nieces founded an " Alfred Newton English Essay 

 Prize " at Magdalene in order to perpetuate his memory there. 



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