CAMBRIDGE, 



43 



theless I am so utterly destitute of an ear, that I cannot per- 

 ceive a discord, or keep time and hum a tune correctly ; and 

 it is a mystery how I could possibly have derived pleasure 

 from music. 



My musical friends soon perceived my state, and some- 

 times amused themselves by making me pass an examination, 

 which consisted in ascertaining how many tunes I could rec- 

 ognise 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 collecting 

 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 winter, 

 moss off old trees and place it in a large bag, and likewise 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. No poet ever felt more delighted at seeing his first 

 poem published than I did at seeing, in Stephens* ' Illustra- 

 tions of British Insects,' the magic words, "captured by C. 

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

 ond 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 acquainted, 



