i UNIVERSITY COLLEGE 7 



University College were men of exceptionable 

 ability, such as Professor George Busk and the 

 cultured surgeon Campbell de Morgan, while among 

 those of the students who became his lifelong friends 

 were the Judge, Sir Edward Fry, and Lord Lister, 

 President of the Royal Society. At first he only 

 took up the ordinary Arts course, in which he 

 matriculated in July 1849, believing that "the study 

 of medicine is, after all, the essential thing by which I 

 must stand or fall in the world," but, wishing " to turn 

 his love of natural history to advantage," he after- 

 wards entered on courses in Zoology, Comparative 

 Anatomy, and Anatomy and Physiology, for which 

 courses he obtained a gold and a silver medal. 

 Writing to his mother in explanation, he said : 



A knowledge of birds alone is of very little use; I want a 

 general and scientific knowledge of the whole animal kingdom, 

 particularly of the lower classes, mollusca and radiata, of which I 

 know next to nothing, and without which I could never turn my 

 love of natural history to any advantage. 



Further on in the same letter he describes a 

 knowledge of the above subjects as " indispensable," 

 and laments not having time to take up " chemistry 

 and geology, which are all so useful." 



To the boy of sixteen, born and brought up in 

 the country, and who had lived so much of his life 

 at home, London seemed at first very hard and 

 unsympathetic. One letter (of many) will be 

 sufficient to show him as he was during his first 

 months in London : 



