230 The Irish Nahirahst. November, 



As a teacher, Cunningham was conspicuoush' successful 

 and inspiring, drawing out to the full the enthusiasm and 

 devotion of his students, who look back to his lectures and 

 social intercourse with feelings of deep admiration. During 

 his tenure of the Chair of Anatomy, Trinity College was made 

 famous by the publication of a number of masterh' memoirs 

 from his pen, in which facts of human anatoni}', new and old, 

 became luminous in the play of his scientific genius and 

 literar}' style. The human bod}^ was to him that of " the 

 paragon of animals," and in elucidating its structure he used 

 the comparative method cautiousl}^ and yet fearlessly-. In his 

 classical paper on the Lumbar Curve in Man and the Apes,^ 

 he dwells on the essential similarity between the form of the 

 backbone in Man and the Chimpanzee, while he shows that at 

 no stage in the development of the human foetus does the 

 vertebral column resemble that of any adult ape. His equally 

 important paper on the Surface Anatomy of the Cerebral 

 Hemispheres'^ contains a thorough description of the highest 

 centre of the human brain at all stages of development and a 

 most instructive comparison of its convolutions and fissures 

 w^ith those of the Apes. In the great paper written by 

 Cunningham in collaboration with Dr. Telford-Smith, on the 

 Cranium and Brain of the Microcephalic Idiot'^ he argues 

 strongly that this cerebral condition must be regarded as an 

 example of reversion and not merelj^ of arrested development, 

 though when he started on the investigation he inclined 

 towards the latter view. Thus he appreciated to the full the 

 zoological bearings of human anatomical study. Many Irish 

 naturalists recall his discussion of the Pithecanthropus re- 

 mains when Dubois exhibited them before the Royal Dublin 

 Society in 1894 ; his reasoned opinion that they indeed repre- 

 sented a new type of Anthropoid nearer to the Hominidae 

 than any existing genus was a strong reinforcement to their 

 discoverer's advocac}* of their importance. 



Cunningham's interest in zoology was shown also b}- his 

 services to the Ro^'al Zoological Society, of which he was for 

 many years secretary (succeeding the late Dr. V. Ball in J 895) 

 and subsequently President. He loved the gardens and the 



' Cunningham Memoirs, R.I.A.^ ii., tS86, 



- lb. vii., 1892. 



^ Trans. K. Dub/. Snc. (2) v., 1 895. 



