"The intellectual milieu of Hayek’s youth was Darwinian. Hayek remarked that both his father and paternal grandfather were Darwinians and that everyone with whom his family associated through his fa ther’s university connections was secular. He recalled that, when he was about fourteen, his father gave him a substantial treatise on the theory of evolution. If he had received the work a year later, he noted, “I probably would have stuck with biology. The things did interest me immensely.” Hayek was extremely interested in botany until he was fifteen or so. It is easy to imagine that conversations regarding his father’s botanical work were a frequent topic around the Hayek family dinner table. August traveled extensively on plant expeditions and had a small business selling and exchanging plant specimens with which young Fritz (Hayek’s nickname, which he disliked) assisted him. The two also went to meetings of the Vienna Zoologic and Botanical Society together. It is possible that three generations of von Hayeks sometimes attended these meetings—Gustav, August, and Friedrich."