Il8 the story or the oak tree 
stroyed the eggs nor carried away more than one. He 
lived in a big house in the country with Mrs. Darwin 
and their nine children and Polly, his favorite dog. 
Polly was a little white fox terrier who loved her master 
dearly and always seemed to know when he was going 
on a journey. Then she would mope and whine and 
cry, and when her master came home again she would 
go almost wild with delight, panting, squeaking, rush¬ 
ing around the room, jumping on and off chairs until 
he would stoop down and press her face to his. Polly 
used to tremble and put on an air of misery when her 
master went by to show that her dinner was late and 
she was hungry. Then Mr. Darwin would throw her 
crackers to catch on her nose. 
Even when he was a boy, Charles Darwin began to 
study nature. He used to collect beetles; finding a new 
beetle was to him like finding a gold nugget! He kept 
on with his beetle-hunting while he was in college. 
“One day,” wrote Darwin, “tearing off some old bark, 
I saw two rare beetles and seized one in each hand; then 
I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to 
lose, so I popped the one which I held in my right hand 
into my mouth. Alas! it spat forth some dreadfully 
bitter fluid, which burnt my tongue so I was forced to 
spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third 
one.” 
