dl4 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Dr. Heberden, a well-known physician of the day. His father's 

 London house, however, was in Connaught Place, from whence, 

 in April, 1809, he went to school at Putney, and Connaught 

 Place at this date was the last street in London west of 

 Oxford Street and the Edgware Road — all beyond being open 

 country and green fields ! 



After the usual preliminary schooling in Latin and Greek at 

 Putney, he proceeded to Eton in 1813, where, having no inclination 

 for games or sports, he spent his play hours in wandering by 

 himself in the green lanes that skirted the "playing fields" 

 looking after stag-beetles, and watching birds. In after life he 

 expressed the conviction that he had derived his taste for Natural 

 History from his uncle, Mr. Chappelow, who was also his god- 

 father, and a good naturalist. 



Neither at Eton, nor subsequently at Cambridge, did he 

 manifest much inclination for either classics or mathematics, 

 but being nevertheless of a studious disposition, he took more 

 delight in reading books of travel and natural history, and was 

 naturally much impressed with White's * Selborne,' which he 

 borrowed from a schoolfellow at Eton, and, fearing that he might 

 never see the book again, actually copied out nearly the whole of 

 it, omitting only a few chapters which were of less interest in a 

 natural-history point of view. This MS. he kept for years, 

 having little idea at that time of becoming the owner of numerous 

 editions of the work, still less of becoming one day the editor of 

 one of them. 



Having determined at an early age that his profession was to 

 be the Church, he never altered his mind, and on the very day 

 of his attaining the age of twenty-three, he was ordained to the 

 curacy of Swaffham Bulbeck, in Cambridgeshire, a parish close 

 to his father's property. He began parish work by taking two 

 full services on the Sunday following, and the manner of his 

 induction was somewhat remarkable. The Vicar of the parish, 

 whose curate he was to be, kept a school in the neighbourhood of 

 Wisbeach, and had never been in the parish of Swaffham Bul- 

 beck since the day he read himself in. More oddly still, he gave 

 Mr. Jenyns the appointment without any interview, and the latter 

 never saw him, his own Vicar, till shortly before his death — 

 twenty years afterwards ! 



The Vicar, however, resigned in five years, and the Bishop of 



