1837.] CHRIST'S COLLEGE. 249 



proposed to be a F. G. S. last Tuesday. It is, however, a great 

 pity that these and the other letters, especially F. R. S., are so 

 very expensive. 



I do not scruple to ask you to write to me in a week's time 

 in Shrewsbury, for you are a good letter writer, and if people 

 will have such good characters they must pay the penalty. 

 Good-bye, dear Fox. 



Yours, 



C. D. 



[His affairs being thus so far prosperously managed he was 

 able to put into execution his plan of living at Cambridge, 

 where he settled on December 10th, 1836. He was at first a 

 guest in the comfortable home of the Henslows, but after- 

 wards, for the sake of undisturbed work, he moved into lodg- 

 ings. He thus writes to Fox, March 13th, 1837, from Lon- 

 don : — 



" My residence at Cambridge was rather longer than I 

 expected, owing to a job which I determined to finish there, 

 namely, looking over all my geological specimens. Cambridge 

 yet continues a very pleasant, but not half so merry a place 

 as before. To walk through the courts of Christ's College, 

 and not know an inhabitant of a single room, gave one a 

 feeling half melancholy. The only evil I found in Cambridge 

 was its being too pleasant : there was some agreeable party 

 or another every evening, and one cannot say one is engaged 

 with so much impunity there as in this great city." 



A trifling record of my father's presence in Cambridge 

 occurs in the book kept in Christ's College combination-room, 

 where fines and bets were recorded, the earlier entries giving 

 a curious impression of the after-dinner frame of mind of the 

 fellows. The bets were not allowed to be made in money, but 

 were, like the fines, paid in wine. The bet which my father 

 made and lost is thus recorded : — 



"Feb. 23, 1837. — Mr. Darwin v. Mr. Baines, that the com- 

 bination-room measures from the ceiling to the floor more 

 than (x) feet. 1 Bottle paid same day. 



