Background
He never married and had no children, but his nephew Doctor Robert Waring Darwin, son of Erasmus and father of Charles Darwin, took his name.
He never married and had no children, but his nephew Doctor Robert Waring Darwin, son of Erasmus and father of Charles Darwin, took his name.
He was educated at Chesterfield Grammar School, and Street John"s College, Cambridge although he apparently did not take a degree, but became a lawyer of Lincoln"s Inn and Gray"s Inn.
Robert Waring Darwin (1724–1816) of Elston Hall was an English botanist. He inherited Elston Hall on the death of his father in 1754. In 1787 he published Principia Botanica (full title: Principia Botanica or, a Concise and Easy Introduction to the Sexual Botany of Linnaeus), in 1787, an introduction to the Linnean system of taxonomy.
His famous great-nephew Charles notes, in his autobiography:
The eldest son of Robert, christened Robert Waring, succeeded to the estate of Elston, and died there at the age of ninety-two, a bachelor.
The two brothers also corresponded together in verse. Robert also cultivated botany, and, when an oldish man, he published his Principia Botanica.
But this was hardly just, as the work contains many curious notes on biology — a subject wholly neglected in England in the last century. The public, moreover, appreciated the book, as the copy in my possession is the third edition
Royal Society.