6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



which really and deeply interested me was physiology, 

 which is the mechanical engineering of living machines ; 

 and, notwithstanding that natural science has been my 

 proper business, I am afraid there is very little of the 

 genuine naturalist in me. I never collected anything, 

 and species work was always a burden to me; what I 

 cared for was the architectural and engineering part 

 of the business, the working out of the wonderful unity 

 of plan in the thousands and thousands of diverse 

 living constructions, and the modifications of similar 

 apparatuses to serve diverse ends. The extraordinary 

 attraction I felt towards the study of the intricacies of 

 living structure nearly proved fatal to me at the outset. 

 I was a mere boy I think between thirteen and 

 fourteen years of age when I was taken by some 

 older student friends of mine to the first post-mortem 

 examination I ever attended. All my life I have been 

 most unfortunately sensitive to the disagreeables 

 which attend anatomical pursuits, but on this occa- 

 sion my curiosity overpowered all other feelings, and 

 I spent two or three hours in gratifying it. I did not 

 cut myself, and none of the ordinary symptoms of 

 dissection-poison supervened, but poisoned I was 

 somehow, and I remember sinking into a strange state 

 of apathy. By way of a last chance, I was sent to the 

 care of some good, kind people, friends of my father's 

 who lived in a farmhouse in the heart of Warwick- 

 shire. I remember staggering from my bed to the win- 

 dow on the bright spring morning after my arrival, 

 and throwing open the casement. Life seemed to come 

 back on the wings of the breeze, and to this day the 

 faint odor of wood-smoke, like that which floated across 

 the farm-yard in the early morning, is as good to me 

 as the "sweet south upon a bed of violets." I soon re- 



