sentences:  Despite his isolation and disability, he studied natural history and became adept in botany, entomology, ornithology and ichthyology.He amassed a good collection of insects, aquatic plants and fishes and studied them with a microscope he built himself.He later claimed that he had first become interested in natural history after picking up a copy of Linnaeus' "Systema Naturae" at the site of a shipwreck on the coast.