he gained some valuable grounding at school were Latin, arithmetic, and
writing.

This estimate of the value of the grammar-school teaching is echoed in
Darwin's own words when describing his school days at precisely the same
age at Shrewsbury Grammar School, where, he says, "the school as a means
of education to me was simply a blank." It is therefore interesting to
notice, side by side, as it were, the occupation which each boy found
for himself out of school hours, and which in both instances proved of
immense value in their respective careers in later life.

Darwin, even at this early age, found his "taste for natural history,
and more especially for collecting," well developed. "I tried," he says,
"to make out the names of plants, and collected all sorts of things,
shells, seals, franks, coins and minerals. The passion for collecting
which leads a man to be a systematic naturalist ... was very strong in
me, and was clearly innate, as none of my sisters or brothers ever had
this taste."

He also speaks of himself as having been a very "simple little fellow"
by the manner in which he was either himself deceived or tried to
deceive others in a harmless way. As an instance of this, he remembered
declaring that he could "produce variously coloured polyanthuses and
primroses by watering them with certain coloured fluids," though he knew
all the time it was untrue. His feeling of tenderness towards all
animals and insects is revealed in the fact that he could not
remember--except on one occasion--ever taking more than one egg out of a
bird's nest; and though a keen angler, as soon as he heard that he
could kill the worms with salt and water he never afterwards "spitted a
living worm, though at the expense, probably, of some loss of success!"