142 NULLIUS IN VERBA 



medicine. But he found anatomy and materia 

 medica intolerable, and the operating theatre was 

 a horror. So he began to work at science in his 

 own way. He learned to stuff birds from an old 

 negro who had known Waterton. Of this instructor 

 he says, "I used often to sit with him, for he was 

 a very pleasant and intelligent man." He also 

 caught sea beasts in the pools on the shore, and 

 made one or two small observations, which were 

 communicated to the Plinian Society. 



Then he was sent to Cambridge with a view 

 to taking Orders. He enjoyed himself riding and 

 shooting, and especially in catching beetles in the 

 fens. But also in more intellectual ways, as in 

 listening to the anthem in King's Chapel, and 

 looking at the pictures in the Fitzwilliam Museum. 

 Henslow, the Professor of Botany treated him 

 as a friend rather than as a pupil, and finally 

 settled his career by sending him round the world 

 in H.M.S. Beagle. He entered the ship an under- 

 graduate, and left it after five years a man of 

 science. I give these well known details to 

 show how little he profited by any regular course 

 of study either at Shrewsbury, Edinburgh, or 

 Cambridge. His start in life depended on the 

 recognition of his capacity by Henslow, and 

 was nearly wrecked by FitzRoy, the Captain 

 of the Beagle, suspecting that no one with a nose 

 like my father's could be an energetic person. 



Are we therefore to conclude that the best 

 method of scientific education is to force a boy to 

 work at uncongenial subjects ? In the case of a 

 genius it may not much matter what he is taught ; 



