Beetle Mania

A good bit of my blogs come from content that I am currently studying because well...when you read three books at once you really do not have a lot of spare time to look into other things, sadly.
Today I found something amazing when reading Desmond and Moore's biography of Charles Darwin (and I do recommend it if you have time to read it, it is amazing)

Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist
By the way, I had the opportunity to correspond with one of the authors of this book, James Moore...because I had some questions about his studies when I researched him as a Darwin historian, he is a very friendly and helpful scholar who gave a random student a bit of his day and made some awesome suggestions, which is why I am promoting this book even more... it is very rare someone is so nice. 

Anyway, when Darwin was attending college at Cambridge to become a member of the Anglican clergy...yep Charles Darwin...he took up the hobby of collecting and categorizing beetles. During one of his years at Cambridge, Darwin and his cousin obsessively collected beetles and this was a popular thing to do. People would buy books and basically compete to see who could amass the most extensive collection of beetles. Darwin freaked out one time because he got ahold of this German species of beetle with red antenna. Now, I do understand the efforts to reconnect to nature by pursuing such a hobby and naturalism was popular during the industrialization filled 19th century in England, but I just cannot get out of my head this intense group of college students at Cambridge...walking around in their gowns and caps...feverishly looking for the perfect beetle specimen. 
Hilarious...

You KNOW you want to spend your time looking for this guy and his friends