CHAPTER FOURTEEN 



CHARLES DARWIN 



1. CHARLES DARWIN was born in 1809 at Shrews- Darwin's 

 bury in England. His father was a doctor of medicine, 



and his grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, was a noted 

 poet and philosopher, with ideas on evolution. The 

 philosophical verse of Erasmus Darwin, written in a 

 style which seems artificial in these days, found many 

 admirers in the eighteenth century. Today we care 

 little for the work as literature, but are interested in the 

 mental tendencies exhibited, in connection with those 

 found in the far more illustrious grandson. The faculty 

 of imagination, which may make a poet and dreamer, 

 is no less valuable to a man of science. Charles Dar- 

 win came of good stock, and had many competent 

 ancestors in addition to those just mentioned. His . 

 mother was one of the Wedgwoods, a family note- 

 worthy in many respects, but now best remembered in 

 connection with the beautiful pottery made at the 

 Etruria works in Staffordshire. An elaborate pedigree 

 of the ancestors of Darwin has lately been issued by the 

 Francis Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics, and 

 it appears that these include such persons as Charle- 

 magne and Alfred the Great. 



2. When eight and one half years of age, Darwin was Boyhood 

 sent to a day school at Shrewsbury. By this time his 



taste for natural history, and more especially for collect- 

 ing, was well developed. He tried to make out the 

 names of plants, and collected shells, coins, minerals, 

 and many other things. He remarked in after years 

 that the passion for collecting was clearly innate, as 

 none of his sisters or his brother ever had this taste. 

 It was no doubt stimulated by the prevalent custom in 



IOI 



