INTRODUCTION. 



boyhood, and interested him to the last. He was most assiduous 

 in searching for fossils in the gravel and elsewhere, and so great 

 was his love for his collections that while as yet quite a little 

 boy the most delightful birthday present he could think of was 

 a box with trays and divisions to hold his fossils and specimens. 

 His mother, thinking that his fondness for fossils was a passing 

 fancy and that he might soon regret the purchase of the box, 

 purposely delayed the present. But he remained constant to 

 his wish and in time received his box. He must at this time 

 have been about seven or eight years old. In the children's 

 museum, which has been preserved, there are specimens labelled 

 with his childish round-hand, such as a piece of stone with the 

 label " marks of some shels ;" and his sister Alice, who was at 

 that time his chief companion, remembers discussing with him 

 one day after the nursery dinner, when he was about nine years 

 old, whether it were better to be a geologist or a naturalist, he 

 deciding for the former on the ground that it was better to do 

 one thing thoroughly than to attempt many branches of science 

 and do them imperfectly. 



Besides fossils, he collected not only butterflies, as do most 

 boys at some time or other, but also birds ; and he with his 

 sister Alice, being instructed in the art of preparing and pre- 

 serving skins, succeeded in making a very considerable collec- 

 tion. He thus acquired before long not only a very large but 

 a very exact knowledge of British birds. 



In the more ordinary work of the school-room he was some- 

 what backward. This may have been partly due to the great 

 difficulty he had in learning to write, for he was not only left- 

 handed but, in his early years, singularly inapt in acquiring 

 particular muscular movements, learning to dance being a great 

 trouble to him. Probably however the chief reason ^ was that he 

 failed to find any interest in the ordinary school studies. He 

 fancied that the family thought him stupid, but this does not 

 appear to have been the case. 



In character he was at this time quick tempered, sometimes 

 even violent, and the energy which he shewed in after life even 

 thus early manifested itself as perseverance, which, when he was 

 crossed, often took on the form of obstinacy, causing at times 

 no little trouble to his nurses and tutors. But he was at the 



