Darwin's essay on Beetles

To students at Osaka University of Foreign Studies I bring in a Darwin essay. He wrote about collecting beetles as a college student. The students cannot read it. Stony looks meet my apologies. We move on to an alternate plan: short poems in English and Japanese. Their faces warm as the pages rustle in the spring evening. Each chooses a favorite and in English eloquently defends the choice. Why couldn't they understand Darwin, with its correspondence to the Japanese fondness for beetle collection?