The young Charles Darwin was an avid collector of beetles and other insects, and devoted much of his free time to adding new specimens to his collection.
“But no pursuit at Cambridge was followed with nearly so much eagerness or gave me so much pleasure as collecting beetles. It was the mere passion for collecting, for I did not dissect them and rarely compared their external characters with published descriptions, but got them named anyhow.”
Darwin frequently made collecting trips into the Fens in the company of friends including his cousin, William Darwin Fox, as well as fellow students Leonard Jenyns, Albert Way, and Harry Thompson. Darwin's enthusiasm for collecting was unsurpassable, and he dreamt up many new ways of obtaining specimens:
“I was very successful in collecting and invented two new methods; I employed a labourer to scrape during the winter, moss off old trees and place [it] in a large bag, and likewise to collect the rubbish at the bottom of the barges in which reeds are brought from the fens, and thus I got some very rare species.”