from Shrewsbury, where her uncle and aunt were in Dr. Darwin's service." At Down the family in time numbered nine children, two, however, not surviving childhood; one died in 1842, another in 1858. His five sons have already attained distinction or positions of influence. The eldest, William Erasmus, became a banker in Southampton; the second, George, was second Wrangler and Smith's Prizeman at Cambridge in 1868, became a Fellow of Trinity, and is now Plumian Professor of Astronomy at his university, having early gained the Fellowship of the Royal Society for his original papers bearing on the evolution of the universe and the solar system, and many other subjects of high mathematical and philosophical interest. His third son, Francis, gained first-class honours in the Cambridge Natural Science Tripos in 1870, and is likewise a Fellow of the Royal Society, in recognition of his original botanical investigations. The fourth, Leonard, an officer in the Royal Engineers, has done valuable astronomical work. The fifth, Horace, has devoted himself to mechanical science, and has largely aided in developing the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company. The great thinker, fulfilling his duties as head of a family with singular success, charged with the burden of new thoughts and observations, slowly perfecting his life work, had neither time nor inclination for controversy. He set himself to publish facts, which by their accumulation tended to clench his arguments. Soon after the "Origin of Species" he had in course of publication several important botanical papers, on the two forms of flower in the Primrose genus (1862), and in the genus Linum (flax), 1863, on the forms of Loosestrife, 1864, all published in the Linnean Society's Journal.