OBITUARY NOTICES OF FELLOWS DECEASED. 



Charles Robert Darwin was the fifth child and second son of 

 Robert Waring Darwin and Susannah Wedgwood, and was born on 

 the 12th February, 1809, at Shrewsbury, where his father was a 

 physician in large practice. 



Mrs. Robert Darwin died when her son Charles was only eight years 

 old, and he hardly remembered her. A daughter of the famous 

 Josiah Wedgwood, who created a new branch of the potter's art, and 

 established the great works of Etruria, could hardly fail to transmit 

 important mental and moral qualities to her children ; and there is a 

 solitary record of her direct influence in the story told by a school- 

 fellow, who remembers Charles Darwin "bringing a flower to school, 

 and saying that his mother had taught him how, by looking at the 

 inside of the blossom, the name of the plant could be discovered." 

 (I, P- 28.*) 



The theory that men of genius derive their qualities from their 

 mothers, however, can hardly derive support from Charles Darwin's 

 case, in the face of the patent influence of his paternal forefathers. 

 Dr. Darwin, indeed, though a man of marked individuality of charac- 

 ter, a quick and acute observer, with much practical sagacity, is said 

 not to have had a scientific mind. But when his son adds that 

 his father " formed a theory for almost everything that occurred " 

 (I, p. 20), he indicates a highly probable source for that inability to 

 refrain from forming an hypothesis on every subject which he con- 

 fesses to be one of the leading characteristics of his own mind, 

 some pages. further on (I, p. 103). Dr. R. W. Darwin, again, was the 

 third son of Erasmus Darwin, also a physician of great repute, 

 who shared the intimacy of Watt and Priestley, and was widely 

 known as the author of 'Zoonomia,' and other voluminous poetical 

 and prose works which had a great vogue in the latter half of the 

 eighteenth century. The celebrity which they enjoyed was in part 

 due to the attractive style (at least according to the taste of that 

 day) in which the author's extensive, though not very profound, 

 acquaintance with natural phenomena was set forth ; but in a still 

 greater degree, probably, to the boldness of the speculative views, 

 always ingenious and sometimes fantastic, in which he indulged. The 

 conception of evolution set afoot by De Maillet and others, in the 

 early part of the century, not only found a vigorous champion in 



* The references throughout this notice are to the ' Life and Letters,' unless the 

 contrary is expressly stated. 



VOL. XLIV. 6 



