Page:A veteran naturalist - being the life and work of W.B. Tegetmeier (IA veterannaturalis00richuoft).pdf/31

 CHAPTER I.

THE CHILDHOOD OF A NATURALIST.

THE life of any man who was born the year after the Battle of Waterloo and who lived until the beginning of the reign of George V, must have some interest, and when the man in question was a trained observer and a skilled writer, as was the subject of this memoir, his life cannot fail to be of peculiar and absorbing interest, and its records well worthy of preservation. To naturalists, the life of the observer who discovered the cylindrical formation of the cell of the bee: to medical men, that of the anatomist who "walked the hospitals" before the days of anæsthetics : and to students of sociology, the life of the writer who witnessed hangings in public and flogging at the cart's tail, must in- evitably appeal. These and many other strange happenings fell to the lot of the late W. B. Tegetmeier, who in the course of his long life witnessed so many changes in the nation's social, political, scientific, and literary life as would be almost incredible to those unacquainted with the facts. Born at the beginning of the new era dating from the French Revolution and the rise and fall of Napoleon, Tegetmeier lived to see the end of the Victorian period, and to B