COLLABORATOR OF DARWIN 99 



and science which enabled Darwin to startle the 

 world with his discoveries and deductions. 

 Darwin's very lack of health tended to his 

 enforcedly methodical habits of life and work, 

 while Tegetmeier's vigorous constitution and love 

 of his fellow man's society led him to the more 

 active pursuits of observation and experiment 

 denied to the older and greater man. 



Both alike were the sons of doctors, and were 

 intended for the medical profession, which both 

 gave up for the pursuit of natural history and 

 kindred branches of science. Both were living 

 examples of the power of heredity, and one might 

 almost say figuratively, of the force of scientific 

 evolution ; for, while Darwin was the grandson 

 of " that great genius " Erasmus Darwin, 

 Tegetmeier's father was evidently of an inquiring, 

 inventive mind (and probably a man fonder of 

 science than money), and his maternal grand- 

 father also was a doctor. Darwin as a boy 

 collected and was fond of beetles ; Tegetmeier 

 from a child loved birds. Both were precocious 

 in a knowledge of their respective hobbies : 

 Darwin wrote his first natural history paper for 

 the Edinburgh University at the age of seventeen, 

 and Tegetmeier built an aviary and flew pigeons 

 at a still earlier age. Neither was a traveller, 

 for, with the exception of the long cruise in the 

 " Beagle " (which of itself was a great advantage 

 for the richer man), Darwin, it is believed, never 



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