Details
COCKERELL, Sir SYDNEY. Autograph manuscript signed of his schoolboy prize essay on shells, "On the British representatives of the Genus Limnaea Brug." Bedford Park, London, 1884. 57 pages, plus title-page and page containing additional note, 8vo, written in ink in a calligraphic hand, including a page of illustrations, on the rectos in a lined notebook, half cloth and marbled boards, with label in his hand on front cover reading "Sydney C. Cockerell. Smee Prize," slight wear, cloth slipcase; with Cockerell's name and address on inside front cover and signed and dated "July 5, 1884" by him at end.
In an initialed note, marked "N.B." and dated "July 7" [1884] on a page preceding the text of his essay, the sixteen-year-old schoolboy writes: "Since this was written my case [containing the shells] has met with an accident. When being brought up to school this morning, it received a shock...In the dinner-hour I succeeded in partly rearranging it...Happily this will not interfere with the conclusions I have drawn." Cockerell concludes his essay: "...I may remark that the pleasure that one receives from studying any branch of Natural History or any family, genus, or even any species is in my opinion not comparable with any other pleasure...the discovery of a species for the first time brings with it a joy..." (as noted in the manuscript, Cockerell did discover a species of shell).
Cockerell entered St. Paul's school in 1882 as a day-boy travelling each day from Chislehurst; in the summer of 1884 he won the Smee prize for this erudite thesis. It was the field of Natural History that five years later provided Cockerell with an introduction to John Ruskin.
In an initialed note, marked "N.B." and dated "July 7" [1884] on a page preceding the text of his essay, the sixteen-year-old schoolboy writes: "Since this was written my case [containing the shells] has met with an accident. When being brought up to school this morning, it received a shock...In the dinner-hour I succeeded in partly rearranging it...Happily this will not interfere with the conclusions I have drawn." Cockerell concludes his essay: "...I may remark that the pleasure that one receives from studying any branch of Natural History or any family, genus, or even any species is in my opinion not comparable with any other pleasure...the discovery of a species for the first time brings with it a joy..." (as noted in the manuscript, Cockerell did discover a species of shell).
Cockerell entered St. Paul's school in 1882 as a day-boy travelling each day from Chislehurst; in the summer of 1884 he won the Smee prize for this erudite thesis. It was the field of Natural History that five years later provided Cockerell with an introduction to John Ruskin.