CHAPTER XVI 



LATER YEARS 



ALTHOUGH, as has been stated above, Newton's home 

 during the last fifty years of his life was at Cambridge, 

 it must not be supposed that he spent all his days in 

 museums and libraries. He was, first of all and by 

 nature, an out-of-doors man, and in early days he was 

 a keen game shot. " Here I oscillate between a gun 

 and a proof-sheet," he wrote in September, 1 870, from 

 Bloxworth, in Dorsetshire, where he spent a part of 

 every summer with two of his sisters between 1866 

 and 1886. He was a large and powerfully built man, 

 and in spite of his lameness he could move about rough 

 country with astonishing ease. At one time or another 

 he made expeditions to many of the remote parts of 

 Britain, and nothing delighted him more than days 

 spent in watching birds. 



The chief thing I have to tell you of is a charming 

 day at Pentire, a headland on the N. coast of Cornwall. 

 When I wrote last I think I told you I had got Gat- 

 combe to arrange for an expedition in search of Choughs. 

 We started about 7 o'clock in the morning and went 

 by rail to Bodmin Road Station, where we had a car- 

 riage to meet us, and getting into it passed through 

 Bodmin (just like an Irish town) and Wadebridge. 

 Thence we bore to the right to a place called Trevornan, 

 a comfortable old house where lived a cheery old lady 

 whose nephew, a certain Mr. Darrell Stephens, was the 

 man who was to show us the Choughs. He is a very 

 good sort of fellow, some 21 or 22 years old, preparing 



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