ch. ii.] CAMBRIDGE. 21 



times amused themselves by making me pass an examination, 

 which consisted in ascertaining how man} 7 tunes I could 

 recognise, when they were played rather more quickly or 

 slowly than usual. ' God save the King,' when thus played, 

 was a sore puzzle. There was another man with almost as 

 bad an ear as I had, and strange to say he played a little on 

 the flute. Once I had the triumph of beating him in one 

 of our musical examinations. 



But no pursuit at Cambridge was followed with nearly 

 so much eagerness or gave me so much pleasure as collect- 

 ing beetles. It was the mere passion for collecting, for I 

 did not dissect them, and rarely compared their external 

 characters with published descriptions, but got them named 

 anyhow. I will give a proof of my zeal : one day, on tearing 

 off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one 

 in each hand ; then I saw a third and new kind, which I 

 could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which I 

 held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas ! it ejected 

 some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I 

 was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the 

 third one. 



I was very successful in collecting, and invented two new 

 methods ; I employed a labourer to scrape, during the win- 

 ter, moss off old trees and place it in a large bag, and like- 

 wise to collect the rubbish at the bottom of the barges in 

 which reeds are brought from the fens, and thus I got some 

 very rare species. Xo poet ever felt more delighted at see- 

 ing his first poem published than I did at seeing, in Stephens' 

 Illustrations of British Insects, the magic words, " captured 

 by 0. Darwin, Esq." I was introduced to entomology by my 

 second cousin, W. Darwin Fox, a clever and most pleasant 

 man, who was then at Christ's College, and with whom I 

 became extremely intimate. Afterwards I became well ac- 

 quainted, and went out collecting, with Albert Way of 

 Trinity, who in after years became a well-known archaeolo- 

 gist ; also with H. Thompson,* of the same College, after- 

 wards a leading agriculturist, chairman of a great railway, 

 and Member of Parliament. It seems, therefore, that a 

 taste for collecting beetles is some indication of future suc- 

 -: j ss in life ! 



' I am surprised what an indelible impression many of the 

 beetles which I caught at Cambridge have left on my mind. 



* Afterwards Sir II. Thompson, first baronet. 



