George Howard, the fifth child of Charles and Emma Darwin, was born at Down July 9th, 1845. Why he was christened George, I cannot say. It was one of the facts on which we founded a theory that our parents lost their presence of mind at the font and gave us names for which there was neither the excuse of tradition nor of preference on their own part. His second name, however, commemorates his great-grandmother, Mary Howard, the first wife of Erasmus Darwin. It seems possible that George's ill-health and that of his father were inherited from the Howards. This at any rate was Francis Galton's view, who held that his own excellent health was a heritage from Erasmus Darwin's second wife. George's second name, Howard, has a certain appropriateness in his case for he was the genealogist and herald of our family, and it is through Mary Howard that the Darwins can, by an excessively devious route, claim descent from certain eminent people, e.g. John of Gaunt. This is shown in the pedigrees which George wrote out, and in the elaborate genealogical tree published in Professor Pearson's Life of Francis Galton. George's parents had moved to Down in September 1842, and he was born to those quiet surroundings of which Charles Darwin wrote “My life goes on like clock-work and I am fixed on the spot where I shall end it.”