

The Ancestry of Francis Galton In 



It is worth noting here that we cannot, when judging of the ability 

 of the Darwin stirp, confine our attention to Erasmus and Charles. 

 Erasmus Darwin's brother the elder Robert Waring Darwin- 

 published a Principia botanica or Introduction to the Sexual Botany 

 of Linnaeus. The present writer is not able to judge its merits, but it 

 ran through several editions, and illustrates at least the taste and bent 

 of the stock. We note how the scientific work of the Darwins begins 

 ilc novo in this generation with the two brothers Robert Waring and 

 Erasmus 1 . The sons of Erasmus by his first wife were Charles, Erasmus 

 and Robert Waring, the father of the greater Charles the younger. 

 It is difficult in this case to separate out the personality of Erasmus 

 the elder from that of his sons. Yet I think there is evidence that 

 there was independence. Charles died from a dissection wound at the 

 early age of 20, and a prize essay of his on pus and mucus and his 

 proposed doctor's thesis were afterwards edited by the elder Erasmus. 

 In the prize essay we find a number of experiments, in the thesis a 

 round of clinical observations discussed in moderate and straight- 

 forward language. Only occasionally, as in the peroration of the 

 thesis, do we feel sure that we read the words of the father, Erasmus 

 himself : 



" I beg, illustrious professors, and ingenious fellow-students, that you will recollect 

 how difficult a task 1 have attempted, to evince the retrograde motions of the lymphatic 

 vessels, when the vessels themselves, for so many ages, escaped the eyes and glasses of 

 philosophers ; and if you are not quite convinced of the truth of this theory, hold, 

 I entreat you, your minds in suspense, 'till ANATOMY draws her sword, with happier 

 omens, cuts asunder the tenets which entangle PHYSIOLOGY ; and, like an augur, 

 inspecting the immolated victim, announces to mankind the wisdom of HEAVEN 2 ." 



In the same manner it is not possible to judge fairly of the 

 thesis of Robert Waring Darwin which was published at Leyden in 

 1785, and afterwards in the Philosophical Transactions, 1786. The 

 author was at the date of publication only 19, and Charles Darwin 

 asserts that it was written by Erasmus. It largely reappears in the 

 Zoonomia, but contains more appeal than the elder Darwin usually 



1 I hardly think we can class Robert Darwin their father in this category; see how- 

 ever Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, l, p. 3. 



a Even the printing of Heaven in smaller capitals than the Sciences is characteristic 

 of Erasmus Darwin's muse, although when reprinting the essay in his Zoonomia, Vol. I, 

 p. 512, he seems to have become conscious of the difficulty and transposed the sizes ! 



