him everywhere. Nor was he ever happier than when assisting others
in those pursuits which occupied his own leisure.

The interesting question as to what led Belt to become a naturalist
is difficult to answer. "Environment" nowadays accounts for much,
but none of his brothers--and all the family had a similar
bringing-up--showed any inclination for what with him became the
ruling passion of his life. And yet, in a wider sense, "environment"
had probably something to do with it. In the first half of the
nineteenth century Newcastle could boast of a succession of
field-naturalists unequalled in the country--Joshua Alder and
Albany Hancock, who wrote the monograph on British nudibranchiate
mollusca for the Ray Society; William Hutton and John Thornhill,
botanists; W.C. Hewitson, Dr. D. Embleton, and John Hancock,
zoologists; Thomas Athey and Richard Howse,
palaeontologists--these, and others like them, were
enthusiastically at work collecting, observing, recording,
classifying. Fresh discoveries were being made every day; what are
now commonplace scientific truisms wore then all the charm of
novelty; the secrets of nature were being unveiled, and modern
science was entering upon an ever-extending kingdom.

Into all this scientific activity Belt was born, and from his
earliest years it may be said of him, as in the well-known lines it
was said of Agassiz:--

"And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old nurse,
Who sang to him night and day
The rhymes of the universe."