TWO SCIENTIFIC WORTHIES. 



8i 



How pregnant his inquiries ! How trenchant his comments ! 

 A phrase suggests the beginnings of new sciences. His phraseol- 

 ogy is cumbersome and pedantic, yet in startling ways he will 

 use poetical expressions in the midst of learned comments that 

 carry the mind along vistas of the imagination. He was a phy- 

 sician, and, while giving only his leisure to science and literature, 

 he became a leading authority in the zoology and botany of Great 

 Britain. He introduced the word " commensality," now in com- 



Thomas Browne. 



mon use, to express a state of many living together, as it were, at 

 the same table. This word is mentioned by Johnson as an ex- 

 ample of a useful term which if rejected must be supplied by cir- 

 cumlocution. Browne was a pioneer in the scientific study of 

 graves and their contents. He appreciated the value of fossils. 

 He was also a comparative anatomist, and constantly engaged iu 

 such topics as the anatomy of the horse, the pigeon, the beaver 

 the badger, the whale. In a note on an autopsy of a spermaceti 

 whale the following passage occurs : " It contained no less than 

 sixty feet in length, the head somewhat peculiar, with a large 

 prominence over the mouth ; teeth only in the lower jaw, received 



VOL. L. 9 



