x OBITUARY 263 
good. Darwin had already shown an aptitude for 
practical medicine (I. p. 37) ; and his subsequent 
eareer proved that he had the making of an 
excellent anatomist. Thus, though his horror of 
operations would probably have shut him off from 
surgery, there was nothing to prevent him (any 
more than the same peculiarity prevented his 
father) from passing successfully through the 
medical curriculum and becoming, like his father 
and grandfather, a successful physician, in which 
ease “ The Origin of Species ” would not have been 
written. Darwin has jestingly alluded to the 
fact that the shape of his nose (to which Captain 
Fitzroy objected), nearly prevented his embarka- 
tion in the “Beagle”; it may be that the 
sensitiveness of that organ secured him for 
science. 
At the end of two years’ residence in Edin- 
burgh it hardly needed Dr. Darwin’s sagacity to 
conclude that a young man, who found nothing 
but dulness in professorial lucubrations,-could not 
bring himself to endure a dissecting room, fled 
from operations, and did not need a profession as 
a means of livelihood, was hardly likely to 
distinguish himself as a student of medicine. He 
therefore made a new suggestion, proposing that 
his son should enter an English University and 
qualify for the ministry of the Church. Charles 
Darwin found the proposal agreeable, none the 
less, probably, that a good deal of natural history 
