[62] That is to say, the sexual relations in such plants as the cowslip.
[63] The racks in which the portfolios were placed are shown in the illustration at the head of the chapter, in the recess at the right-hand side of the fire-place.
[64] He departed from his rule in his "Note on the Habits of the Pampas Woodpecker, Colaptes campestris," Proc. Zool. Soc., 1870, p. 705: also in a letter published in the Athenæum (1863, p. 554), in which case he afterwards regretted that he had not remained silent. His replies to criticisms, in the latter editions of the Origin, can hardly be classed as infractions of his rule.
CHAPTER V. CAMBRIDGE LIFE.—THE APPOINTMENT TO THE 'BEAGLE.'
My father's Cambridge life comprises the time between the Lent Term, 1828, when he came up to Christ's College as a Freshman, and the end of the May Term, 1831, when he took his degree[65] and left the University.
He "kept" for a term or two in lodgings, over Bacon[66] the tobacconist's; not, however, over the shop in the Market Place, so well known to Cambridge men, but in Sydney Street. For the rest of his time he had pleasant rooms on the south side of the first court of Christ's.[67]
What determined the choice of this college for his brother Erasmus and himself I have no means of knowing. Erasmus the elder, their grandfather, had been at St. John's, and this college might have been reasonably selected for them, being connected with Shrewsbury School. But the life of an undergraduate at St. John's seems, in those days, to have been a troubled one, if I may judge from the fact that a relative of mine migrated thence to Christ's to escape the harassing discipline of the place.
Darwin seems to have found no difficulty in living at peace with all men in and out of office at Lady Margaret's elder foundation. The impression of a contemporary of my father's is that Christ's in their day was a pleasant, fairly quiet college, with some tendency towards "horsiness"; many of the men made a custom of going to Newmarket during the races, though betting was not a regular practice. In this they were by no means discouraged by the Senior Tutor, Mr. Shaw, who was himself generally to be seen on the Heath on these occasions.