144 CAMBRIDGE. ^ETAT. 19-22. 



rejoicing enthusiasm. Entomology, riding, shooting in the 

 fens, suppers and card-playing, music at King's Chapel, en- 

 gravings at the Fitzwilliam Museum, walks with Professor 

 Henslow — all combined to fill up a happy life. He seems to 

 have infected others with his enthusiasm. Mr. Herbert re- 

 lates how, during the same Barmouth summer, he was pressed 

 into the service of " the science " — as my father called col- 

 lecting beetles. They took their daily walks together among 

 the hills behind Barmouth, or boated in the Mawddach estu- 

 ary, or sailed to Sarn Badrig to land there at low water, or 

 went fly-fishing in the Cors-y-gedol lakes. " On these occa- 

 sions Darwin entomologized most industriously, picking up 

 creatures as he walked along, and bagging everything which 

 seemed worthy of being pursued, or of further examination. 

 And very soon he armed me with a bottle of alcohol, in which 

 I had to drop any beetle which struck me as not of a common 

 kind. I performed this duty with some diligence in my con- 

 stitutional walks ; but alas ! my powers of discrimination sel- 

 dom enabled me to secure a prize — the usual result, on his 

 examining the contents of my bottle, being an exclamation, 

 ' Well, old Cherbury ' * (the nickname he gave me, and by 

 which he usually addressed me), * none of these will do.' " 

 Again, the Rev. T. Butler, who was one of the Barmouth 

 reading-party in 1828, says : " He inoculated me with a taste 

 for Botany which has stuck by me all my life." 



Archdeacon Watkins, another old college friend of my 

 father's, remembers him unearthing beetles in the willows 

 between Cambridge and Grantchester, and speaks of a certain 

 beetle the remembrance of whose name is " Crux major." f 

 How enthusiastically must my father have exulted over this 

 beetle to have impressed its name on a companion so that he 

 remembers it after half a century ! Archdeacon Watkins goes 

 on : "I do not forget the long and very interesting conversa- 

 tions that we had about Brazilian scenery and tropical vege- 



* No doubt in allusion to the title of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. 

 f PanagcBus crux-major. 



