40 MEMORIES OP MY LIFE 



Civil Service Commissioner ; Professor Wheatstone, 

 later Sir Charles, who conjointly with Cooke was the 

 introducer of the electric telegraph ; A. Smee the 

 electrician, subsequently an authority on gardening, 

 and others. 



Professor Richard Partridge, F.R.S., familiarly 

 called " Dickey," was brother to John Partridge, R.A., 

 and Professor of Anatomy. It was commonly said that 

 the brothers had each followed the occupation best 

 fitted to the other. Certainly Richard Partridge was 

 an admirable draughtsman, but was not, so far as I 

 was then capable of judging, a man who really loved 

 and revelled in science. He delighted in minute 

 points of human anatomy and did not generalise, 

 consequently the information given in his lectures 

 seemed to me as dry as the geography of Pinnock's 

 Catechism. For all that, they were enlivened by his 

 never-failing humour. His instruction seemed to me 

 deficient in the why and the wherefore. A human 

 hand was just a human hand to him ; its analogies 

 with paws, hoofs, wings, claws, and fins were never 

 alluded to. 



I spent a happy time under his roof. We pupils 

 had the drawing-room to read and write in, with a 

 wardrobe and a hanging closet tenanted by a jointed 

 skeleton which we could study at will. The days 

 were spent in the Medical Department of King's 

 College, which was quite disconnected with the 

 classical side. All the pupils entered at the same 

 door, but there we separated. The medicals turned 

 sharply to the right, and many of them went down- 

 stairs to the dissection room, where much of my own 

 time was spent. 



