iv 



the discipline suited to his faculties, whatever that career might be. 

 And a knowledge of French and German, especially the latter, 

 would have removed from his path obstacles which he never fully 



overcame. 



Thus, starved and stunted on the intellectual side, it is not sur- 

 prising that Charles Darwin's energies were directed towards athletic 

 amusements and sport, to such an extent, that even his kind and 

 sagacious father could be exasperated into telling him that " he cared', 

 for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching." (I, p. 32.) It 

 would be unfair to expect even the wisest of fathers to have foreseen 

 that the shooting and the rat-catching, as training in the ways of 

 quick observation and in physical endurance, would prove more valu- 

 able than the construing and verse-making to his son, whose attempt, 

 at a later period of his life, to persuade himself " that shooting was 

 almost an intellectual employment : it required so much skill to judge 

 where to find most game, and to hunt the dogs well " (I, p. 43), was 

 by no means so sophistical as he seems to have been ready to admit. 



In 1825, Dr. Darwin came to the very just conclusion that his son 

 Charles would do no good by remaining at Shrewsbury School, and 

 sent him to join his elder brother Erasmus, who was studying medicine 

 at Edinburgh, with the intention that the younger son should also 

 become a medical practitioner. Both sons, however, were well aware 

 that their inheritance would relieve them from the urgency of the 

 struggle for existence which most professional men have to face, and 

 they seem to have allowed their tastes, rather than the medical 

 curriculum, to have guided their studies. Erasmus Darwin was 

 debarred by constant ill-health from seeking the public distinction 

 which his high intelligence and extensive knowledge would, under 

 ordinary circumstances, have insured. He took no great interest in 

 biological subjects, but his companionship must have had its influence 

 on his brother. Still more was exerted by friends like Coldstream and 

 Grant, both subsequently well-known zoologists (and the latter an 

 enthusiastic Lamarckian), by whom Darwin was induced to interest 

 himself in marine zoology. A notice of the ciliated germs of Flustra, 

 communicated to the Plinian Society in 1826, was the first fruits o^ 

 Darwin's half century of scientic work. Occasional attendance at the 

 Wernerian Society brought him into relation with that excellent 

 ornithologist the elder Macgillivray, and enabled him to see and 

 hear Audubon. Moreover, he got lessons in bird-stuffing from a 

 negro, who had accompanied the eccentric traveller Waterton in his 

 wanderings, before settling in Edinburgh. 



JSTo doubt Darwin picked up a great deal of valuable knowledge 

 during his two years' residence in Scotland ; but it is equally clear that 

 next to none of it came through the regular channels of academic 

 education. Indeed, the influence of the Edinburgh professoriate 



