INTRODUCTION 
In the Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, edited by his son, 
Mr. Francis Darwin (vol. iii. p. 188), the following passage 
occurs :— 
“In the spring of this year (1874) he read a book which gave him 
great pleasure, and of which he often spoke with admiration, The 
Naturalist in Nicaragua, by the late Thomas Belt. Mr. Belt, whose 
untimely death may well be deplored by naturalists, was by profession 
an engineer, so that all his admirable observations in natural history, 
in Nicaragua and elsewhere, were the fruit of his leisure. The book is 
direct and vivid in style, and is full of description and suggestive 
discussions. With reference to it my father wrote to Sir J. D. Hooker: 
“Belt I have read, and I am delighted that you like it so much; it 
appears to me the best of all natural history journals which have ever 
been published.’ ”’ 
Now that the book so highly recommended by such an 
authority is about to be introduced to a public which has 
hitherto only known it by hearsay, it will be interesting to 
inquire into the reason of its appreciation by such men as 
Darwin and Hooker—and Lyall, Huxley, and Wallace, 
with other leaders of the scientific world of that day, might 
be quoted to the same effect—and to give some particulars 
of the author’s short active life. 
The Belts were an old family which had been established 
at Bossal in Yorkshire since the reign of Richard II. The 
main line died out some twenty years ago, but about the 
beginning of the eighteenth century a member of the family 
went to the Tyne to join the well-known ironworks of 
Crawley at Winlaton. He and his descendants remained 
with the firm for over a century, and he was the great- 
great-grandfather of the grandfather of Thomas Belt born 
at Newcastle-on-Tyne on November 27, 1832. 
Thomas was the fourth child of a family of seven. His 
mother possessed a singularly sweet and beautiful disposi- 
tion; his father, much given to hobbies, was stern and un- 
bending, and he himself combined an almost womanly 
gentleness with a quiet determination that unflinchingly 
faced all obstacles. With a high sense of personal honour, 
Vil 
