Alfred Russel Wallace 



country from another. ^^ No interesting facts were ever 

 given, no accounts of the country by travellers were ever 

 read, no good maps ever given us, nothing but the horrid 

 stream of unintelligible place-names to be learnt.-' The 

 only subjects in which he considered that he gained some 

 valuable grounding at school were Latin, arithmetic, and 

 writing. 



This estimate of the value of the grammar-school teach- 

 ing is echoed in Darwin's own words when describing his 

 school days at precisely the same age at Shrewsbury Gram- 

 mar School, where, he says, " the school as a means of 

 education to me was simply a blank." It is therefore 

 interesting to notice, side by side, as it were, the occupa- 

 tion which each boy found for himself out of school hours, 

 and which in both instances proved of immense value in 

 their respective careers in later life. 



Darwin, even at this early age, found his ^Haste for 

 natural history, and more especially for collecting," well 

 developed. ^' I tried," he says, " to make out the names of 

 plants, and collected all sorts of things, shells, seals, franks, 

 coins and minerals. The passion for collecting which leads 

 a man to be a systematic naturalist . . . was very strong 

 in me, and was clearly innate, as none of my sisters or 

 brothers ever had this taste." 



He also speaks of himself as having been a very ^^ simple 

 little fellow " by the manner in which he was either himself 

 deceived or tried to deceive others in a harmless way. As 

 an instance of this, he remembered declaring that he could 

 '' produce variously coloured polyanthuses and primroses 

 by watering them with certain coloured fluids," though he 

 knew all the time it was untrue. His feeling of tenderness 

 towards all animals and insects is revealed in the fact that 

 he could not remember — except on one occasion — ever taking 

 more than one egg out of a bird's nest; and though a keen 



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