1 86 THE APPOINTMENT TO THE 'BEAGLE.' jETAT. 22. 



"August. Went on Geological tour* by Llangollen, 

 Ruthin, Conway, Bangor, and Capel Curig, where I left 

 Professor Scdgwick, and crossed the mountain to Barmouth." 



In a letter to Fox (May 1831), my father writes : " I am 

 very busy . . . and see a great deal of Henslow, whom I do 

 not know whether I love or respect most." His feeling for this 

 admirable man is finely expressed in a letter which he wrote 

 to Rev. L. Blomefield (then Rev. L. Jenyns), when the latter 

 was engaged in his ' Memoir of Professor Henslow ' (published 

 1862). The passage f has been made use of in the first of the 

 memorial notices written for 'Nature,' and Mr. Romanes 

 points out that my father, " while describing the character of 

 another, is unconsciously giving a most accurate description 

 of his own " : 



" I went to Cambridge early in the year 1828, and soon 

 became acquainted, through some of my brother entomolo- 

 gists, with Professor Henslow, for all who cared for any branch 

 of natural history were equally encouraged by him. Nothing 

 could be more simple, cordial, and unpretending than the 

 encouragement which he afforded to all young naturalists. I 

 soon became intimate with him, for he had a remarkable 

 power of making the young feel completely at ease with him ; 

 though we were all awe-struck with the amount of his know- 

 ledge. Before I saw him, I heard one young man sum up his 

 attainments by simply saying that he knew everything. When 

 I reflect how immediately we felt at perfect ease \vith a man 

 older, and in every way so immensely our superior, I think it 

 was as much owing to the transparent sincerity of his cha- 

 racter as to his kindness of heart ; and, perhaps, even still 

 more, to a highly remarkable absence in him of all self-con- 

 sciousness. One perceived at once that he never thought of 



* Mentioned by Sedgwick in his f ' Memoir of the Rev. John 



preface to Sailer's ' Catalogue of Stevens Henslow, M.A.,' by the 



Cambrian and Silurian Fossils,' Rev. Leonard Jenyns. 8vo. Lon- 



1873. don, 1862, p. 51. 





