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the: story of the oak tree 
keeper had let them go without paying, Garnett replied 
that his uncle had left money to the town on condition 
that anyone who wore his hat and moved it in a certain 
way was to be given whatever he wished. The truth was 
that the boy’s father was known at the shops and the 
shopkeepers trusted him to pay promptly. Garnett re¬ 
peated this in another shop, and then sent Darwin into a 
third, lending him the old hat. Of course, when Darwin 
moved his hat and turned to go without paying, the 
shop-keeper ran after him and gave him a trouncing, 
while the mischievous Garnett stood by and laughed. 
I could tell many more stories about Darwin’s boy¬ 
hood, how he could beat the other boys at swimming 
races, how dogs would come to him from their masters, 
how when walking along a wall in a day-dream he fell 
off, how his father said to him when he was sixteen, 
“You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat- 
catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all 
your family.” 
The most interesting of all is the story of his voyage 
around the world in the Beagle, a small sailing vessel 
which took five years to make the trip. Darwin was 
twenty-one when they set out and sometimes he used to 
get pretty homesick, but he collected stones and bones 
and beetles to his heart’s content, and learned many facts 
which were useful to him in later life. He was study¬ 
ing the rocks then, and tells how when the ship reached 
