308 HEROES OF SCIENCE. 



Mrs. Lyell, he went through all the fun and 

 trouble, the games by day and the bolsterings by 

 night, the keeping of pets, and the petty warfares 

 of the English schoolboy. When eleven years of 

 age, Lyell got into indifferent health at school after 

 measles, and this necessitated his being less pressed 

 at his lessons. He was fond of study, however, 

 and this enforced idleness made him take to some 

 of his father's amusements, that of entomology. 



Young Lyell studied butterflies, and chased 

 them in the fields and woodlands of the New 

 Forest in Hampshire. He soon began to study 

 the changes of form which insects undergo in their 

 short lives, and to watch, hour after hour, the 

 habits of the water-beetles and other aquatic 

 insects. After spoiling a considerable number of 

 hats in chasing butterflies, Lyell was supplied with 

 a net and a cabinet in which to place his stores of 

 insect wealth. Oddly enough, some of the varieties 

 of the butterflies which young Lyell collected were 

 of use in after years to Curtis the entomologist. 

 The boy had no companions in these "un-English" 

 amusements, and was very grateful for the assis- 

 tance of his father's head servant, who knew a few 

 plants by sight, and helped his young master. 

 "Instead of sympathy," wrote Lyell, "I received 

 from almost every one beyond my home, either 

 ridicule, or hints that the pursuits of other boys 

 were more manly. Whether did I fancy that 

 insects had no feeling? What could be the use 

 of them.-* The contemptuous appellation of 'butter- 



