8 THE DARWIN FAMILY. 



warmest affection forty-seven years after his death when 

 I was a young medical student at Edinburgh . . . 



" About the character of his second son Erasmus (born 1759), 

 I have little to say, for though he wrote poetry, he seems to 

 have had none of the other tastes of his father. He had, 

 however, his own peculiar tastes, viz. genealogy, the collecting 

 of coins, and statistics. When a boy he counted all the 

 houses in the city of Lichfield, and found out the number of 

 inhabitants in as many as he could ; he thus made a census, 

 and when a real one was first made, his estimate was found to 

 be nearly accurate. His disposition was quiet and retiring. 

 My father had a very high opinion of his abilities, and this 

 was probably just, for he would not otherwise have been 

 invited to travel with, and pay long visits to, men so dis- 

 tinguished in different ways as Boulton the engineer, and Day 

 the moralist and novelist." His death by suicide, in 1799, 

 seems to have taken place in a state of incipient insanity. 



Robert Waring, the father of Charles Darwin, was born 

 May 30, 1766, and entered the medical profession like his 

 father. He studied for a few months at Ley den, and took 

 his M.D.* at that University on Feb. 26, 1785. " His father'' 

 (Erasmus) " brought f him to Shrewsbury before he was 

 twenty-one years old (1787), and left him 20, saying, 'Let 

 me know when you want more, and I will send it you.' His 

 uncle, the rector of Elston, afterwards also sent him 20, and 



* I owe this information to the that Professor Rauwenhoff is able 



kindness of Professor Rauwenhoff, to tell me that my grandfather lived 



Director of the Archives at Leyden. together with a certain " Petrus 



He quotes from the catalogue of Crompton, Anglus," in lodgings in 



doctors that " Robertus Waring the Apothekersdijk. Dr. Darwin's 



Darwin, Anglo-britannus," defended Leyden dissertation was published 



(Feb. 26, 1785) in the Senate a in the ' Philosophical Transactions/ 



Dissertation on the coloured images and my father used to say that the 



seen after looking at a bright object, work was in fact due to Erasmus 



and " Medicinse Doctor creatusest Darwin. F. D. 

 a clar. Paradijs." The archives of . f 'Life of Erasmus Darwin," 



Leyden University are so complete p. 85. 



