20 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Ch. II. 



keep time and hum a tune correctly ; and it is a mystery how I 

 could possibly have derived pleasure from music. 



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 compared their external characters 

 with published descriptions, but got them Darned 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 published than I did at seeing, in Stephens' Illustrations 

 of British Insects, the magic words, " captured by C. Darwin, 

 Esq." I was introduced to entomology by my second cousin, 

 W. Darwin Fox, a clever and most pleasant man, who was 

 then at Christ's College, and with whom I became extremely 

 intimate. Afterwards I became well acquainted, and went out 

 collecting, with Albert Way of Trinity, who in after years 

 became a well-known archaeologist ; also with H. Thompson,* 

 of the same College, afterwards a leading agriculturist, chair- 

 man of a great railway, and Member of Parliament. It seems, 

 therefore, that a taste for collecting beetles is some indication 

 of future success in life ! 



I am surprised what an indelible impression many of the 

 beetles which I caught at Cambridge have left on my mind. I 



* Afterwards Sir H. Thompson, first baronet. 



