8 THE DARWIN FAMILY. 



lecting of coins, and statistics. When a boy he counted all 

 the houses in the city of Lichfield, and found out the num- 

 ber of inhabitants in as many as he could ; he thus made a 

 census, and when a real one was first made, his estimate was 

 found to be nearly accurate. His disposition was quiet and 

 retiring. My father had a very high opinion of his abilities, 

 and this was probably just, for he would not otherwise have 

 been invited to travel with, and pay long visits to, men so dis- 

 tinguished in different ways as Boulton the engineer, and Day 

 the moralist and novelist." His death by suicide, in 1799, 

 seems to have taken place in a state of incipient insanity. 



Robert Waring, the father of Charles Darwin, was born 

 May 30, 1766, and entered the medical profession Hke his 

 father. He studied for a few months at Leyden, and took 

 his M. D.* at that University on Feb. 26, 1785. '' His father " 

 (Erasmus) " brought f him to Shrewsbury before he was 

 twenty-one years old (1787), and left him ^20, saying, 'Let 

 me know v/hen you want more, and I will send it you.' His 

 uncle, the rector of Elston, afterwards also sent him ^20, and 

 this was the sole pecuniary aid which he ever received . . . 

 Erasmus tells Mr. Edgeworth that his son Robert, after 

 being settled in Shrewsbury for only six months, *' already 

 had between forty and fifty patients.* By the second year 

 he was in considerable, and ever afterwards in very large, 

 practice." 



* I owe this information to the kindness of Professor Rauwenhoff, Di- 

 rector of the Archives at Leyden. He quotes from the catalogue of doc- 

 tors that " Robertus Waring Darwin, Anglo-britannus," defended (Feb. 

 26, 1785) in the Senate a Dissertation on the coloured images seen after 

 looking at a bright object, and " Medicinge Doctor creatus est a clar. Para- 

 dijs." The archives of Leyden University are so complete that Professor 

 Rauwenhoff is able to tell me that my grandfather lived together with a 

 certain "Petrus Crompton, Anglus," in lodgings in the Apothekersdijk. 

 Dr. Darwin's Leyden dissertation was published in the ' Philosophical 

 Transactions,' and my father used to say that the work was in fact due to 

 Erasmus Darwin. — F. D. 



f ' Life of Erasmus Darwin,' p. 85. 



