V 



appears to have been mainly negative, and in some cases deterrent ; 

 creating in his mind, not only a very low estimate of the value of 

 lectures, but an antipathy to the subjects which had been the occasion 

 of the boredom inflicted upon him by their instrumentality. With 

 the exception of Hope, the Professor of Chemistry, Darwin found 

 them all " intolerably drill." Forty years afterwards he writes of 

 the lectures of the Professor of Materia Medica that they were 

 "fearful to remember." The Professor of Anatomy made his 

 lectures " as dull as he was himself," and he must have been very dull 

 to have wrung from his victim the sharpest personal remark recorded 

 as his. But the climax seems to have been attained by the Professor 

 of Geology and Zoology, whose preelections were so " incredibly dull " 

 that they produced in their hearer the somewhat rash determination 

 never " to read a book on geology or in any way to study the science " 

 so long as he lived. (I, p. 41.) 



There is much reason to believe that the lectures in question were 

 eminently qualified to produce the impression which they made ; and 

 there can be little doubt, that Darwin's conclusion that his time was 

 better employed in reading than in listening to such lectures was 

 a sound one. But it was particularly unfortunate that the personal 

 and professorial dulness of the Professor of Anatomy, combined with 

 Darwin's sensitiveness to the disagreeable concomitants of anatomical 

 work, drove him away from the dissecting room. In after life, he 

 justly recognised that this was an " irremediable evil " in reference to 

 the pursuits he eventually adopted ; indeed, it is marvellous that he 

 succeeded in making up for his lack of anatomical discipline, so far as 

 his work on the Cirripedes shows he did. And the neglect of anatomy 

 had the further unfortunate result that it excluded him from the best 

 opportunity of bringing himself into direct contact with the facts of 

 nature which the University had to offer. In those days, almost the 

 only practical scientific work accessible to students was anatomical, 

 and the only laboratory at their disposal the dissecting room. 



We may now console ourselves with the reflection that the partial 

 evil was the general good. Darwin had already shown an aptitude 

 for practical medicine (I, p. 37) ; and his subsequent career proved 

 that he had the making of an excellent anatomist. Thus, though his 

 horror of operations would probably have shut him off from surgery, 

 there was nothing to prevent him (any more than the same peculiarity 

 prevented his father) from passing successfully through the medical 

 curriculum and becoming, like his father and grandfather, a successful 

 physician, in which case 4 The Origin of Species ' would not have been 

 written. Darwin has jestingly alluded to the fact that the shape of 

 his nose (to which Captain Fitzroy objected), nearly prevented his 

 embarkation in the " Beagle ' ; it may be that the sensitiveness of that 

 organ secured him for science. 



