50 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 



My musical friends soon perceived my state, and 

 sometimes amused themselves by making me pass an 

 examination, which consisted in ascertaining how 

 many tunes I could recognise, when they were played 

 rather more quickly or slowly than usual. ' God save 

 the King,' when thus played, was a sore puzzle. 

 There was another man with almost as bad an ear as 

 I had, and strange to say he played a little on the 

 flute. Once I had the triumph of beating him in one 

 of our musical examinations. 



But no pursuit at Cambridge was followed with 

 nearly so much eagerness or gave me so much pleasure 

 as collecting beetles. It was the mere passion for 

 collecting, for I did not dissect them, and rarely com- 

 pared their external characters with published descrip- 

 tions, but got them named anyhow. I will give a 

 proof of my zeal : one day, on tearing off some old 

 bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each 

 hand ; then I saw a third and new kind, which I 

 could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which 

 I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas ! it 

 ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my 

 tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, 

 which was lost, as was the third one. 



I was very successful in collecting, and invented 

 two new methods ; I employed a labourer to scrape 

 during the winter, moss off old trees and place it in 

 a large bag, and likewise to collect the rubbish at the 

 bottom of the barges in which reeds are brought from 

 the fens, and thus I got some very rare species. No 

 poet ever felt more delighted at seeing his first poem 



