CAMBRIDGE. 55 



These men and others of the same standing, together 

 with Henslow, used sometimes to take distant excur- 

 sions into the country, which I was allowed to join, 

 and they were most agreeable. 



Looking back, I infer that there must have been X 

 something in me a little superior to the common 

 run of youths, otherwise the above-mentioned men, 

 so much older than me and higher in academical 

 position, would never have allowed me to associate 

 with them. Certainly I was not aware of any such 

 superiority, and I remember one of my sporting 

 friends, Turner, who saw me at work with my 

 beetles, saying that I should some day be a Fellow 

 of the Royal Society, and the notion seemed to me _j 

 preposterous. 



During my last year at Cambridge, I read with care 

 and profound interest Humboldt's * Personal Narra- 

 tive.' This work, and Sir J. Herschel's ' Introduction 

 to the Study of Natural Philosophy,' stirred up in me 

 a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribu- 

 tion to the noble structure of Natural Science. No one 

 or a dozen other books influenced me nearly so much 

 as these two. I copied out from Humboldt long pas- 

 sages about Teneriffe, and read them aloud on one of 

 the above-mentioned excursions, to (I think) Henslow, 

 Ramsay, and Dawes, for on a previous occasion I had 

 talked about the glories of Teneriffe, and some of the 

 party declared they would endeavour to go there ; but 

 I think that they were only half in earnest. I was, 

 however, quite in earnest, and got an introduction to a 

 merchant in London to enquire about ships ; but the 



