iv MODERN E VOL UTION 1 1 9 



to be trusted, I was well fitted in one respect to be a 

 clergyman. A few years ago the secretaries of a German 

 psychological society asked me earnestly by letter for a 

 photograph of myself; and some time afterwards I received 

 the proceedings of one of the meetings, in which it seemed 

 that the shape of my head had been the subject of a public 

 discussion, and one of the speakers declared that I had the 

 bump of reverence developed enough for ten priests. 



The result was that early in 1828 Darwin went 

 to Cambridge, the three years spent at which were 

 ' time wasted, as far as the academical studies were 

 concerned.' His passion for shooting and hunting 

 led him into a sporting, card-playing, drinking com- 

 pany, but science was his redemption. No pursuit 

 gave him so much pleasure as collecting beetles, of 

 his zeal in which the following is an example : * 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 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.' 



Happily for his future career, and therefore for 

 the interests of science, Darwin became intimate with 

 men like Whewell, Henslow, and Sedgwick, while the 

 reading of Humboldt's Personal Narrative, and of Sir 

 John Herschel's Introduction to Natural Philosophy, 

 stirred up in him *a burning zeal to add even the 

 most humble contribution to the noble structure of 

 Natural Science.' The vow to eschew geology was 

 quickly broken when he came under the spell of 



