The Naturalist in Nicaragua

This Project Gutenberg Etext Prepared Down Under In Australia by:
Sue Asscher <asschers@bigpond.com> in connivance with her Californian co-conspirator Robert Prince <rkp277@msn.com>
EVERYMAN, I WILL GO WITH THEE, & BE THY GUIDE IN THY MOST NEED TO GO BY THY SIDE.
LONDON: PUBLISHED BY J.M. DENT & SONS LTD. AND IN NEW YORK BY E.P. DUTTON & CO.
In the Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, edited by his son, Mr. Francis Darwin (volume 3 page 188), the following passage occurs:—
In the spring of this year (1874) he read a book which gave him great pleasure, and of which he often spoke with admiration, The Naturalist in Nicaragua, by the late Thomas Belt. Mr. Belt, whose untimely death may well be deplored by naturalists, was by profession an engineer, so that all his admirable observations in natural history, in Nicaragua and elsewhere, were the fruit of his leisure. The book is direct and vivid in style, and is full of description and suggestive discussions. With reference to it my father wrote to Sir J.D. Hooker: 'Belt I have read, and I am delighted that you like it so much; it appears to me the best of all natural history journals which have ever been published.'
Now that the book so highly recommended by such an authority is about to be introduced to a public which has hitherto only known it by hearsay, it will be interesting to inquire into the reason of its appreciation by such men as Darwin and Hooker—and Lyell, Huxley, and Wallace, with other leaders of the scientific world of that day, might be quoted to the same effect—and to give some particulars of the author's short active life.
The Belts were an old family which had been established at Bossal in Yorkshire since the reign of Richard II. The main line died out some twenty years ago, but about the beginning of the eighteenth century a member of the family went to the Tyne to join the well-known ironworks of Crawley at Winlaton. He and his descendants remained with the firm for over a century, and he was the great-great-grandfather of the grandfather of Thomas Belt born at Newcastle-on-Tyne on November 27, 1832.