THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Vol. XV.] MAY, 1882. [No. 228 



CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN. 

 Obituary Notice. 



To WRITE an obituary notice of so great and so well-known a 

 man as the late Mr. Darwin seems to be almost a work of 

 supererogation, but we cannot let bis death pass without remind- 

 ing our readers of some of the work so quietly, yet so success- 

 fully, accomplished by him who was at once the most modest, 

 and probably the greatest, naturalist who ever lived. 



Mr. Darwin was the son of Eobert Waring Darwin, F.R.S., 

 a physician at Shrewsbury, his mother being a daughter of the 

 celebrated Josiah Wedgwood. His grandfather. Dr. Erasmus 

 Darwin, was in his time much celebrated as a scientific worker 

 and poet, he also being a Fellow of the Royal Society. It may 

 be said that the very teaching of descent of Mr. Darwin was 

 exemplified in himself, and that in him was inherited his 

 ancestor's ability and scientific tastes, but to be amplified and 

 strengthened. 



The Eev. Dr. Butler, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield, was 

 Mr. Darwin's schoolmaster at Shrewsbury School. Following 

 the example of his grandfather, he went, in 1825, to Edinburgh 

 University. Here he was much interested in marine zoology, and 

 in 1826 read, before the Plinian Society in that city, which was at 

 the time one of the chief literary debating clubs, probably his first 

 scientific paper, on the ova of Flustra, one of the Polyzoa. Having 

 left the northern classic city, Mr. Darwin next went to Cambridge, 

 attaching himself to Christ's College, where, in 1831, he took 

 his Bachelor's degree. In those days, when scientific study was 



