old window of the school reading Shakespeare. He made acquaintance, too, with the poems of Thomson, Byron and Scott, but confesses that in later life, to his great regret, he lost all pleasure from poetry of any kind, even from Shakespeare. The first book that excited in him a wish to travel was a copy of the _Wonders of the World_ in the possession of a schoolfellow, which he read with some critical discrimination, for he used to dispute with other boys about the veracity of its statements. Nothing in the school-life could daunt his ardour in the pursuit of natural history. He continued to be a collector, and began to show himself an attentive observer of insects and birds. White's _Selborne_, which has started so many naturalists on their career, stimulated his zeal, and he became so fond of birds as to wonder in his mind why every gentleman did not become an ornithologist. Nor were his interests confined to the biological departments of Nature. With his brother, who had made a laboratory in the garden tool-house, he worked hard at chemistry, and learned for the first time the meaning of experimental research. These extra-scholastic pursuits, which he declares to have been the best part of his education at school, came somehow to be talked of by his companions, who consequently nicknamed him 'Gas'; and Dr. Butler, when he heard of them, rebuked the young philosopher, for 'wasting time on such useless subjects,' and called him a 'poco curante.' It was evident to his father that further attendance at Shrewsbury School would not advance young Darwin's education, and he was accordingly sent in 1825, when he was a little over sixteen years old, to join his elder brother, who was attending the medical classes of the University of Edinburgh. It was intended that he should begin the study of medicine, and qualify himself for that profession; but he had already discovered that a sufficient competence would eventually come to him to enable him to live in some comfort and independence. So he went to the lectures with no very strong determination to get from them as much good as if he knew that his living was to depend on his success. He found them 'intolerably dull,' and records in maturer years his deliberate conviction that 'there are no advantages, and many disadvantages, in lectures compared with reading.' That he did not conquer his repugnance to the study of anatomy in particular is remarkable, when we consider how strong already was his love of biology, and how wholly it dominated his later life. Tenderness of nature seems to have had much to do with his repugnance. He could not bear the sight of suffering; the cases in the clinical wards in the Infirmary distressed him, and after bringing himself to attend for the first time the operating theatre, he rushed away before the operations were completed and never went back. But he afterwards came to regard as one of the greatest evils of his life