grandfather—transformed the garden toolhouse into a chemistry lab and allowed Charles to help him with his experiments. This earned Charles the nickname “Gas” at school and an angry public rebuke from Dr Butler.
Charles was doing so poorly at school that when it was time for Erasmus to go off to Edinburgh University, his father decided to send Charles with him. The boys were supposed to study medicine. Here,too, Charles found the lectures oppressively dull. He couldn’t bear to dissect anything, and the experience of seeing a botched operation on a child, “long before the blessed days of chloroform,” was to haunt him for the rest of his life. But it was in Edinburgh that he first found friends who shared his passion for science.
After two sessions at Edinburgh, Robert Darwin became resigned to the fact that Charles was not cut out for a medical career. Perhaps he would make a good clergyman? Dutiful Charles had no objections, but just the same, he thought he should check up on Church of England dogma before agreeing to commit his life to instilling it in others. “Accordingly I read with care Pearson on the
Creed
, and a few other books on divinity; and as I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself that our Creed must be fully accepted.”
Charles spent the next three years at Cambridge University, where he managed to get better grades. But still he felt a restless dissatisfaction with the curriculum. His happiest moments there were spent in pursuit of his adored beetles, now dead or alive.
I will give a proof of my zeal: one day, on 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 that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one.
It was as a beetle hunter that the first published reference to Charles Darwin was made. “No poet ever felt more delighted at seeing his first poem published than I did at seeing, in Stephen’s
Illustrations of British Insects
, the magic words, ‘captured by C. Darwin, Esq.’ ”
At Cambridge he had been persuaded to take a course in geology taught by Adam Sedgwick. Darwin told Professor Sedgwick of the curious but credible claim made to him by a laborer that a “large, worn tropical Volute shell” (the spiral-shaped shell of a warm-water mollusc) had been found embedded in an old Shrewsbury gravel pit. Sedgwick was incurious and dismissive; it must have been dumped there by someone. Darwin remembered in his
Autobiography
,
But then, [Sedgwick added,] if [the shell was] really embedded there it would be the greatest misfortune for geology, as it would overthrowall that we know about the superficial deposits of the Midland Counties. These gravel-beds belong in fact to the glacial period, and in after years I found in them broken arctic shells. But I was then utterly astonished at Sedgwick not being delighted at so wonderful a fact as a tropical shell being found near the surface in the middle of England. Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them.
At about that time, Darwin’s cousin brought him around to one of the Rev. John Steven Henslow’s botany lectures. This was “a circumstance which influenced my career more than any other.” A handsome man in his early thirties, Henslow had the great teacher’s genius for making his subject come alive, so much so that the same students returned year after year to attend courses they had already completed. Moreover, he exhibited an exceptional sensitivity to the feelings of his students. The novice’s “foolish” question was answered
Charles was doing so poorly at school that when it was time for Erasmus to go off to Edinburgh University, his father decided to send Charles with him. The boys were supposed to study medicine. Here,too, Charles found the lectures oppressively dull. He couldn’t bear to dissect anything, and the experience of seeing a botched operation on a child, “long before the blessed days of chloroform,” was to haunt him for the rest of his life. But it was in Edinburgh that he first found friends who shared his passion for science.
After two sessions at Edinburgh, Robert Darwin became resigned to the fact that Charles was not cut out for a medical career. Perhaps he would make a good clergyman? Dutiful Charles had no objections, but just the same, he thought he should check up on Church of England dogma before agreeing to commit his life to instilling it in others. “Accordingly I read with care Pearson on the
Creed
, and a few other books on divinity; and as I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself that our Creed must be fully accepted.”
Charles spent the next three years at Cambridge University, where he managed to get better grades. But still he felt a restless dissatisfaction with the curriculum. His happiest moments there were spent in pursuit of his adored beetles, now dead or alive.
I will give a proof of my zeal: one day, on 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 that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one.
It was as a beetle hunter that the first published reference to Charles Darwin was made. “No poet ever felt more delighted at seeing his first poem published than I did at seeing, in Stephen’s
Illustrations of British Insects
, the magic words, ‘captured by C. Darwin, Esq.’ ”
At Cambridge he had been persuaded to take a course in geology taught by Adam Sedgwick. Darwin told Professor Sedgwick of the curious but credible claim made to him by a laborer that a “large, worn tropical Volute shell” (the spiral-shaped shell of a warm-water mollusc) had been found embedded in an old Shrewsbury gravel pit. Sedgwick was incurious and dismissive; it must have been dumped there by someone. Darwin remembered in his
Autobiography
,
But then, [Sedgwick added,] if [the shell was] really embedded there it would be the greatest misfortune for geology, as it would overthrowall that we know about the superficial deposits of the Midland Counties. These gravel-beds belong in fact to the glacial period, and in after years I found in them broken arctic shells. But I was then utterly astonished at Sedgwick not being delighted at so wonderful a fact as a tropical shell being found near the surface in the middle of England. Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them.
At about that time, Darwin’s cousin brought him around to one of the Rev. John Steven Henslow’s botany lectures. This was “a circumstance which influenced my career more than any other.” A handsome man in his early thirties, Henslow had the great teacher’s genius for making his subject come alive, so much so that the same students returned year after year to attend courses they had already completed. Moreover, he exhibited an exceptional sensitivity to the feelings of his students. The novice’s “foolish” question was answered
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