84 
The Queensl\nd Naturalist. 
VoL. I. 
TRANSACTIONS 
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 
By J. Shirley, B.Sc., Senior Enspector of Schools, 
Hon. Mem. Roy. Soc. Tas , Phar. Soc. Qd. 
CHARLES ROBERT DARWIN. 
Charles Darwin was horn at Shrewsbury, on February 
12th, 1809. His father was Dr. R. W. DarAvin, F.R.S., 
a physician of eminence. Avith a AA^onderful power of 
diagnosing diseases, and a man of most benevolent nature. 
His mother was a daughter of Josiah WedgAvood, of the 
Etruria Potteries, Staffordshire. His paternal grand- 
father, Erasmus Darwin. AA^as a robust, athletic man, a 
teetotaler before teetotalism, and an abolitionist before 
the anti-slavery laAvs, a Avriter of rhapsodical poetry and 
philosophical biologist. His contemporaries delighted in 
his poetry, but rejected his biology, a decision which is 
noAv completely reversed. Charles Darwin’s grandfather 
is now regarded as a prime founder and early prophet of 
the evolutionary stysem, as may be seen from the folloAving 
selection from his “ Temple of Nature ” : — 
Organic life beneath the shoreless waves 
Was born, and nursed in oceaTi’s pearly caves ; 
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass. 
Move on the mud, or pierce tlie watery mass : 
These, as successive generations bloom. 
New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume ; 
Whence countless groups of vegetation sjning, 
And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing, 
Darwin’s maternal grandfather. Josiah Wedgwood, 
was a skilful and indefatigable man. of indomitable energy, 
and with great poAvers of attention to detail, and of forcing 
his way in life against all obstacles. In Charles DarAA'in, 
the philosophic spirit of his father’s family, combined with 
the patience, carefulness and minuteness of detail of the 
WedgAvood’s to produce the complete man of genius. 
The DarAvins indeed were a very gifted family, of 
varied powers and striking attainments. Erasmus Dar- 
wii^’s brother Robert Avas a botanist of repute. Among 
his uncles, Charles Darwin would enjoy the society of Sir 
Francis Darwin, noted as a keen obesrver of animals. 
Several cousins Avere men of eminence, including Mr. Hens- 
leigh Wedgwood, the philologist, and Mr. Francis Galton, 
the author of that essentially DarAAdnian work, “ Hereditary 
Genius.” 
