xiv MEMOIR 



in which many of Frank Buckland's suggestions were 

 forestalled by half a century. 



Charles Cornish was the eldest son of the Rev. C. 

 J. Cornish (now of Thurlestone, Fleet), sometime 

 scholar of Eton and of Corpus Christi College, 

 Oxford, afterwards Vicar of Debenham in Suffolk, 

 and then Rector of Childrey, Berks, to which living 

 he was presented by his college in 1882. To his 

 father's influence Charles Cornish ascribed his love 

 of sport and of the classics, a debt which he acknow- 

 ledged in the dedication of the " Nights with an 

 Old Gunner." In his personal appearance, vivacity, 

 and eager activity of mind and body, he strongly 

 resembled his mother. From her, too, he inherited 

 his taste for languages and powers of expression, 

 while the whole of his childhood and early manhood 

 were deeply influenced by her personal charm, fine 

 character, and great intellectual gifts, which have 

 become an abiding tradition in the Suffolk village 

 which was the home of her sons' earlier years. 



The boundless energy, quick fancy, and intense 

 interest and curiosity in everything around him, which 

 are apparent in his writings, characterised him from 

 his earliest years. When a tiny child in petticoats, 

 he not only knew the habits and nesting-places of 

 nearly all the living inhabitants of the garden and 

 fields in which he and his brothers played, but his 

 vivid imagination, eager for adventure, peopled their 

 little world with a more remarkable fauna of his 

 own creation. 



Occasionally this led to misunderstanding or worse ; 



