28 EAELY DAYS 
stones and hunting in the rejectament of the sea for beetles. 
His collection of insects is becoming considerable, he devotes 
every spare minute to it, and has opened a correspondence 
with several entomologists, both British and foreign. We 
sent you a Glasgow newspaper last Tuesday, which men- 
tioned the prizes : in the Natural Philosophy Class, where 
Joseph gained one prize and worked for three, he was the 
youngest student of all, and much younger than the majority 
of those who attend the Anatomical Lectures, where he carried 
off the single prize which alone is given, among a class often 
consisting of more than a hundred individuals. These 
circumstances, which cannot be pubhcly known, ought yet 
to be thankfully taken into account by us, when calculating 
the amount of his labour and of the success which has crooned 
that labour. I could not help hoping that the dear boy 
had caught a shred of his grandfather's mantle (far be it 
from me, by this awkward and tattered simile, however, to 
imply that the garment is either worn out or cast aside by the 
honored wearer) when I saw him, earnestly and unprompted 
during his papa's absence, undertake the task of cataloguing 
every book in the house. All the names were written down 
and arranged alphabetically, and part of the fair index was 
made before his father returned. 
Of his tastes and education, Joseph himself wrote later, 
towards the end of the Antarctic voyage, to his aunt, Mary 
Turner. The letter, a copy probably touched up by his mother, 
is dated April 18, 1843. 
You remind me of the times when we used to sit in the 
study (where probably you now are and where this note may 
reach you some two months hence) reading Tacitus : at least 
you and my grandfather reading it and I looking on. 
Alas ! I never had much taste for Latin and Greek, or 
any of the dead languages ; and (except that I should have 
the satisfaction of knowing that my father's money was not 
so nmch thrown away) I greatly doubt if my having been a 
good scholar would give me now so much pleasure as you 
might imagine. What I do really regret is the httle attention 
I paid to Ancient and especially to Modern History. If half 
the time spent on the Classics had been devoted to those 
subjects, the knowledge of them would prove a far more 
