

CHAPTER I. 



The Childhood of a Naturalist. 



The life of any man who was born the year 

 after the Battle of Waterloo and who lived until 

 the beginning of the reign of George V, must 

 have some interest, and when the man in question 

 was a trained observer and a skilled writer, as 

 was the subject of this memoir, his life cannot 

 fail to be of peculiar and absorbing interest, and 

 its records well worthy of preservation. To 

 naturalists, the life of the observer who discovered 

 the cylindrical formation of the cell of the bee : 

 to medical men, that of the anatomist who 

 " walked the hospitals " before the days of 

 anaesthetics : and to students of sociology, the 

 life of the writer who witnessed hangings in 

 public and flogging at the cart's tail, must in- 

 evitably appeal. These and many other strange 

 happenings fell to the lot of the late W. B. 

 Tegetmeier, who in the course of his long life 

 witnessed so many changes in the nation's social, 

 political, scientific, and literary life as would 

 be almost incredible to those unacquainted with 

 the facts. Born at the beginning of the new 

 era dating from the French Revolution and the 

 rise and fall of Napoleon, Tegetmeier lived 

 to see the end of the Victorian period, and to 



B 



