part of Shrewsbury known as Frankwell, where the other children were born.
This house was built by Dr. Darwin about 1800, it is now in the possession
of Mr. Spencer Phillips, and has undergone but little alteration. It is a
large, plain, square, red-brick house, of which the most attractive feature
is the pretty green-house, opening out of the morning-room.

The house is charmingly placed, on the top of a steep bank leading down to
the Severn. The terraced bank is traversed by a long walk, leading from
end to end, still called "the Doctor's Walk." At one point in this walk
grows a Spanish chestnut, the branches of which bend back parallel to
themselves in a curious manner, and this was Charles Darwin's favourite
tree as a boy, where he and his sister Catherine had each their special
seat.

The Doctor took a great pleasure in his garden, planting it with ornamental
trees and shrubs, and being especially successful in fruit-trees; and this
love of plants was, I think, the only taste kindred to natural history
which he possessed. Of the "Mount pigeons," which Miss Meteyard describes
as illustrating Dr. Darwin's natural-history taste, I have not been able to
hear from those most capable of knowing. Miss Meteyard's account of him is
not quite accurate in a few points. For instance, it is incorrect to
describe Dr. Darwin as having a philosophical mind; his was a mind
especially given to detail, and not to generalising. Again, those who knew
him intimately describe him as eating remarkably little, so that he was not
"a great feeder, eating a goose for his dinner, as easily as other men do a
partridge." ('A Group of Englishmen,' page 263.) In the matter of dress
he was conservative, and wore to the end of his life knee-breeches and drab
gaiters, which, however, certainly did not, as Miss Meteyard says, button
above the knee--a form of costume chiefly known to us in grenadiers of
Queen Anne's day, and in modern wood-cutters and ploughboys.