Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin 269 



Josiah Wedgwood, of the well-known pottery works at 

 Etruria, Staffordshire. 



In his charming and frank fragments of autobiography 

 Darwin recalls many incidents of his own childhood. As 

 a boy he early developed a taste for collecting plants, shells, 

 minerals and other natural objects, and he was at pains to 

 learn their names. He tells a curious story of himself 

 pretending that he could alter the colour of flowers by 

 watering them with coloured fluids, curious because at his 

 age boys are not as a rule interested in such problems 

 of vegetable physiology. It is characteristic that in the 

 earliest portrait of him, a charming crayon sketch in which 

 his youngest sister Catherine also appears, he is depicted 

 holding a pot of flowers in his hands. At the age of nine 

 he was sent to the school at Shrewsbury, then in its picturesque 

 old buildings in the town ; he was a boarder there, and thus 

 had, as he says, " the great advantage of living the life of a 

 true schoolboy." He remained at school until he was sixteen, 

 and then his father, thinking he was not doing much good, 

 sent him to join his elder brother, who was studying medicine 

 at Edinburgh University. At this period, like his grand- 

 father, his father and his brother, Darwin was destined to 

 study medicine, and he attended the medical course, which 

 consisted entirely of lectures, all of them, with but one 

 exception, " intolerably dull." Apart from the lectures, 

 which were evidently almost useless, Darwin acquired a 

 good deal of miscellaneous information whilst at Edinburgh ; 

 he did much collecting along the shore, learnt the art of the 

 bird-stuffer, frequented two or three societies, and doubt- 

 less, as is the habit of those of his age, took part in many 

 and interminable discussions. He also became an ardent 

 sportsman and was especially enthusiastic about shooting. 

 Apparently, however, his heart was not in his medical 

 work, and in 1827 his father proposed that he should become 

 a clergyman, and with this in view decided to send him to 

 Cambridge. 



The Admission Book at Christ's College contains the 

 following entry : 



" Admissi sunt in Collegium Christi a Festo Divi 



Michaelis 1827 ad Fes urn eiusdem 1828 : 



