probably a Cimex mottled with red, and Zygaena, the burnet-moth. I was at
that time very passionate (when I swore like a trooper) and quarrelsome.
The former passion has I think nearly wholly but slowly died away. When
journeying there by stage coach I remember a recruiting officer (I think I
should know his face to this day) at tea time, asking the maid-servant for
toasted bread and butter. I was convulsed with laughter and thought it the
quaintest and wittiest speech that ever passed from the mouth of man. Such
is wit at 10 1/2 years old. The memory now flashes across me of the
pleasure I had in the evening on a blowy day walking along the beach by
myself and seeing the gulls and cormorants wending their way home in a wild
and irregular course. Such poetic pleasures, felt so keenly in after
years, I should not have expected so early in life.

1820, July.

Went a riding tour (on old Dobbin) with Erasmus to Pistyll Rhiadr (Chapter
I./7. Pistyll Rhiadr proceeds from Llyn Pen Rhiadr down the Llyfnant to
the Dovey.); of this I recollect little, an indistinct picture of the fall,
but I well remember my astonishment on hearing that fishes could jump up
it.

(Chapter I./8. The autobiographical fragment here comes to an end. The
next letters give some account of Darwin as an Edinburgh student. He has
described ("Life and Letters," I., pages 35-45) his failure to be
interested in the official teaching of the University, his horror at the
operating theatre, and his gradually increasing dislike of medical study,
which finally determined his leaving Edinburgh, and entering Cambridge with
a view to taking Orders.)