words of his father) that the 'vigour of his mind languished in the pursuit
of classical elegance like Hercules at the distaff, and sighed to be
removed to the robuster exercise of the medical school of Edinburgh.' He
stayed three years at Edinburgh, working hard at his medical studies, and
attending 'with diligence all the sick poor of the parish of Waterleith,
and supplying them with the necessary medicines.' The Aesculapian Society
awarded him its first gold medal for an experimental inquiry on pus and
mucus. Notices of him appeared in various journals; and all the writers
agree about his uncommon energy and abilities. He seems like his father to
have excited the warm affection of his friends. Professor Andrew Duncan...
spoke...about him with the warmest affection forty-seven years after his
death when I was a young medical student at Edinburgh...

"About the character of his second son, Erasmus (born 1759), I have little
to say, for though he wrote poetry, he seems to have had none of the other
tastes of his father. He had, however, his own peculiar tastes, viz.,
genealogy, the collecting of coins, and statistics. When a boy he counted
all the houses in the city of Lichfield, and found out the number of
inhabitants in as many as he could; he thus made a census, and when a real
one was first made, his estimate was found to be nearly accurate. His
disposition was quiet and retiring. My father had a very high opinion of
his abilities, and this was probably just, for he would not otherwise have
been invited to travel with, and pay long visits to, men so distinguished
in different ways as Boulton the engineer, and Day the moralist and
novelist." His death by suicide, in 1799, seems to have taken place in a
state of incipient insanity.

Robert Waring, the father of Charles Darwin, was born May 30, 1766, and
entered the medical profession like his father. He studied for a few
months at Leyden, and took his M.D. (I owe this information to the kindness