CHARLES DARWIN. 



compared their external characters with published descriptions, but 

 got them named anyhow. What an indelible impression many of 

 them have left on my mind ! I can remember the exact appearance 

 of certain posts, old trees, and banks where I made a good capture. 

 I am reminded of my old days by my third boy having just begun 

 collecting beetles, and he caught the other day Brachinus crepitans 

 my blood boiled with old ardour when he caught a Licinus, a prize 

 unknown to me I feel like an old war-horse at the sound of the 

 trumpet when I read about the capturing of rare beetles, it makes 

 me long to begin collecting again. (Life, etc., i. 50 ; ii. 36, 140, 141 ; 

 iii. 335.) 



His friend Herbert cannot go to Barmouth, but he 

 must be written to urgently to search for, find, and send 

 on quite a host of beetles : the violet-black, the large 

 smooth black, the long smooth jet-black, the small ' 

 pinkish, the yellowish transparent, the bluish metallic- 

 coloured dung-beetle, etc. etc. Even on the voyage, to 

 the Naturalist of the Beagle, beetles were of absorbing 

 interest. At Bahia, as the Journal tells us, he had amused 

 himself with observing the springing powers of the 

 1'yrophorus luminosus ; and from Eio he writes raptur- 

 ously to Henslow of Hydroporus, Hygrotus, Hydrobius, 

 Pselophus, Staphylinus, Curculio, as to Fox of Noterus, 

 Colyrnbetes, Hydrophilus, Gromius, but asking the latter, 

 almost pathetically, " Do you think any such will ever 

 give me so much pleasure as our old friend crux major ? 

 And so it continues all through the voyage. At sea, in 

 Patagonia, on the Andes, Keeling Island, Tierra del Fuego, 

 the Galapagos, St. Helena, it is always beetles that are 

 largely his interest. A propos of this last island, a long 

 and peculiar footnote occurs in the Journal (p. 490), and 

 is good to read. The stercovora are " beetles which find 

 support in the matter which has already contributed 

 towards the life of other and larger animals ; " and 

 Mr. Darwin is much exercised in mind on a problem 

 suggested by the differences of them as in Europe, St. 

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