"You care for nothing but shooting dogs and catching rats. You will shame yourself and all your family," Darwin's father once said to him.
Most people know that Charles Darwin was the father of evolutionary biology. However, what is not widely known is what sort of person he was.
In his autobiography (自传), Darwin described himself as a rather "naughty" child. He stole fruit from the trees on the side of his parents' house, made up wild stories, and tried to be the center of attention in the family.
Even worse, it seemed that Charles Darwin was a lazy young man and a slow learner at grammar school. He was a rather shy student but he did take great pleasure in showing off his athletic skills to the other schoolboys. It is not known how well Darwin did at school, but we could say that he was likely to be an student.
When Darwin was nine years old, his father sent him to a boy's boarding school. At this school, Darwin learned classics, ancient history and Greek, all of which he found boring. He was not inspired much by his schooling. He found his only pleasure there was reading Shakespeare's historical plays, and the poems of Byron, Scott, and Thomson. His increased interest in natural science was encouraged by events outside his formal education.
As Darwin grew older, collecting became his major hobby. It became very clear that Darwin was not taking his studies seriously.
