“The greatness of Charles Darwin’s work is, and will be for ever, one of the glories of the University of Cambridge. It is fitting on the present occasion that one who speaks on behalf of English men of science should call to mind the nature of his connection with this great University and the peculiarly English features of his life-story and of that fine character which endears his memory to all of us as much as his genius excites our admiration and reverence. Darwin was not, like so many a distinguished son of Cambridge, a scholar or a fellow of his college, nor a professor of the University. His connection with the University and the influence which it had upon his life belong to a tradition and a system which have survived longer in our old English universities than in those of other lands. Darwin entered the University, not seeking a special course of study with the view of professional training, nor aiming at success in competitive examinations for honours and emolument. He came to Cambridge intending to become a clergyman, but blessed with sufficient means and leisure to enable him to pursue his own devices, to collect beetles, to explore the fen country, and to cultivate his love of nature. It was thus that he became acquainted with that rare spirit Henslow, the Cambridge professor of botany, and it is through Henslow and the influence of his splendid abilities and high personal character upon Darwin that Cambridge acquired the right to claim the author of the ‘Origin of Species’ as a product of her beneficence and activity as a seat of learning. “As an Oxford man and a member of Exeter College, I may remind this assembly that in precisely the same way Darwin’s dearest friend and elder brother in science, Charles Lyell, had a few years earlier entered at Exeter College, and by happy chance fallen under the influence of the enthusiastic Buckland, the University reader in geology and a Canon of Christ Church. The wise freedom of study permitted and provided for in those long-passed days by Oxford and Cambridge is what has given the right to claim the discovery, if not the making, of Lyell to the one and of Darwin to the other. “Darwin’s love of living nature and of the country life are especially English characteristics; so, too, I venture to think, are the unflinching determination and simple courage—I may even say the audacity—with which he acquired, after he had left the University, the wide range of detailed knowledge in various branches of science which he found necessary in order to deal with the problem of the origin of the species of plants and animals, the investigation of which became his passion.