x OBITUARY 259 
ticularaptitude for grammatical exercises ; appeared 
to the “strictly classical” pedagogue to be no mind 
at all. As a matter of fact, Darwin’s school 
education left him ignorant of almost all the 
things which it would have been well for him to 
know, and untrained in all the things it would 
have been useful for him to be able to do, in 
after life. Drawing, practice in English compo- 
sition, and instruction in the elements of the 
physical sciences, would not only have been infi- 
nitely valuable to him in reference to his future 
career, but would have furnished the discipline 
suited to his faculties, whatever that career might 
be. And a knowledge of French and German, 
especially the latter, would have removed from his 
path obstacles which he never fully overcame. 
Thus, starved and stunted on the intellectual 
side, it is not surprising that Charles Darwin’s 
energies were directed towards athletic amuse- 
ments and sport, to such an extent, that even his 
kind and sagacious father could be exasperated 
into telling him that “he cared for nothing but 
shooting, dogs, and rat-catching.” (I. p. 32.) It 
would be unfair to expect even the wisest of fathers 
to have foreseen that the shooting and the rat- 
catching, as training in the ways of quick observa- 
tion and in physical endurance, would prove more 
valuable than the construing and verse-making to 
his son, whose attempt, at a later period of his life, 
to persuade himself “that shooting was almost an 
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