86 EDUCATION OF A MAN OF SCIENCE 



ancient history and ancient geography. Euclid, 

 which he Hked and felt to be educational, was 

 taught by a private tutor who had the attractive 

 characteristic of wearing top boots. 



I now pass from general education to the 

 teaching of science. When I went to Cambridge 

 in 1866, the teaching, as far as the biological 

 sciences went, was in a somewhat dead condition. 

 Indeed, I hardly think it had advanced much from 

 the state of things which existed in 1828, when my 

 father entered Christ's College. Cambridge was 

 a turning point in his scientific life, chiefly through 

 Professor Henslow's discovery that the youth, 

 whom his father Dr. R. W. Darwin thought likely 

 to be a mere sporting man and a disgrace to his 

 family, was really a remarkable person, possessed 

 by a burning zeal for science. Henslow made a 

 friend of my father (he was known as the "man 

 who walks with Henslow"), and recommended him 

 as naturalist to the "Beagle," where he was made 

 into a man of science. 



In my time there were two ways of acquiring 

 knowledge : attending the lectures of University 

 professors, and going to a coach. Lectures, as my 

 father has said, have "no advantages and many 

 disadvantages . . . compared with reading." And 

 the same view (or heresy as he confesses it to be) 

 has been well given by the late Henry Sidgwick in 

 his Miscellaneous Essays (1904). He holds that a 

 purely expository lecture, without experiments or 

 specimens, is something very Hke a barbarism, an 

 echo of the days before printing was invented. He 

 points out too how there is every temptation to the 



