The Autobiography of Charles Darwin | Page 9

progress of Geology. Equally striking is
the fact that I, though now only sixty-seven years old, heard the
Professor, in a field lecture at Salisbury Craigs, discoursing on a
trapdyke, with amygdaloidal margins and the strata indurated on each
side, with volcanic rocks all around us, say that it was a fissure filled
with sediment from above, adding with a sneer that there were men
who maintained that it had been injected from beneath in a molten
condition. When I think of this lecture, I do not wonder that I
determined never to attend to Geology.
>From attending --'s lectures, I became acquainted with the curator of
the museum, Mr. Macgillivray, who afterwards published a large and
excellent book on the birds of Scotland. I had much interesting
natural-history talk with him, and he was very kind to me. He gave me
some rare shells, for I at that time collected marine mollusca, but with
no great zeal.
My summer vacations during these two years were wholly given up to
amusements, though I always had some book in hand, which I read
with interest. During the summer of 1826 I took a long walking tour
with two friends with knapsacks on our backs through North wales. We
walked thirty miles most days, including one day the ascent of
Snowdon. I also went with my sister a riding tour in North Wales, a
servant with saddle-bags carrying our clothes. The autumns were
devoted to shooting chiefly at Mr. Owen's, at Woodhouse, and at my
Uncle Jos's (Josiah Wedgwood, the son of the founder of the Etruria
Works.) at Maer. My zeal was so great that I used to place my

shooting-boots open by my bed-side when I went to bed, so as not to
lose half a minute in putting them on in the morning; and on one
occasion I reached a distant part of the Maer estate, on the 20th of
August for black-game shooting, before I could see: I then toiled on
with the game-keeper the whole day through thick heath and young
Scotch firs.
I kept an exact record of every bird which I shot throughout the whole
season. One day when shooting at Woodhouse with Captain Owen, the
eldest son, and Major Hill, his cousin, afterwards Lord Berwick, both
of whom I liked very much, I thought myself shamefully used, for
every time after I had fired and thought that I had killed a bird, one of
the two acted as if loading his gun, and cried out, "You must not count
that bird, for I fired at the same time," and the gamekeeper, perceiving
the joke, backed them up. After some hours they told me the joke, but it
was no joke to me, for I had shot a large number of birds, but did not
know how many, and could not add them to my list, which I used to do
by making a knot in a piece of string tied to a button-hole. This my
wicked friends had perceived.
How I did enjoy shooting! But I think that I must have been
half-consciously ashamed of my zeal, for I tried to persuade myself that
shooting was almost an intellectual employment; it required so much
skill to judge where to find most game and to hunt the dogs well.
One of my autumnal visits to Maer in 1827 was memorable from
meeting there Sir J. Mackintosh, who was the best converser I ever
listened to. I heard afterwards with a glow of pride that he had said,
"There is something in that young man that interests me." This must
have been chiefly due to his perceiving that I listened with much
interest to everything which he said, for I was as ignorant as a pig about
his subjects of history, politics, and moral philosophy. To hear of praise
from an eminent person, though no doubt apt or certain to excite vanity,
is, I think, good for a young man, as it helps to keep him in the right
course.
My visits to Maer during these two or three succeeding years were
quite delightful, independently of the autumnal shooting. Life there was
perfectly free; the country was very pleasant for walking or riding; and
in the evening there was much very agreeable conversation, not so
personal as it generally is in large family parties, together with music.

In the summer the whole family used often to sit on the steps of the old
portico, with the flower-garden in front, and with the steep wooded
bank opposite the house reflected in the lake, with here and there a fish
rising or a water-bird paddling about. Nothing has left a more vivid
picture on my mind than these evenings at Maer. I was also attached to
and greatly revered my