772 A MEMOIR OF WILLIAM KITCHEN PARKER, F. R. S. 



give even his youngest son, Mr. W. K. Purker, ";i start in life." From 

 his placid and thoughtful mother he probably inherited much of his 

 love of reading and his talent for learning. 



Always energetic, in spite of constant ill health, Mr. Parker enthu- 

 siastically carried on his medical work and his natural history studies, 

 especially in the microscopic structure of animal and vegetable tissues. 

 Polyzoa and Foraminifera, collected on a visit to Jiognor, and from 

 among sponge sand and Indian sea-shells, especially attracted his at- 

 tention. Having sorted, mounted, and drawn numbers of these micro- 

 zoa, he was induced, about 1856, by his friends W. Crawford Williamson 

 and T. liupert Jones, to work at the Foraminifera systematically. His 

 paper on the MilioUtidw of the Indian Seas (Trans. Micros. Soc, 1858), 

 and a joint paper (with T. R. Jones) on the Foraminifera of the 2^orwe- 

 giau (ioast {Annals N. JL, 1857) resulted; and the latter formed the 

 basis of a memoir on the Arctic and North Atlantic Foraminifera (Phil. 

 Trans., 18(55). With T. Rupert Jones, and afterwards with W. B. Car- 

 penter and U. B. Brady, Mr. Parker, down to 1873, described and illus- 

 trated many groups and species of Foraminifera, recent and fossil (see 

 C. D. Sherborn's "Biography of Foraminifera" for these papers and 

 memoirs), thereby establishing more accurately a natural classification 

 of these microzoa, determining their bathymetrical conditions, and 

 therefore their value in geology. That he did not neglect anatomical 

 research is shown by memoirs in the Proceedings and Transactions of 

 the Zoological Society on the osteology (chiefly cranial) and systematic 

 position of Baheniceps (1800), Pterocles (1863), Palamedea (1863), Galli- 

 naceous Birds and Tinamous (1862 and 1866), Kagu (1861 and 1869), 

 Ostriches (1864), Microglossa (1865), Common Fowl (1860), Eel (Nature, 

 1871), skull of Frog (1871), of Crow (1872), Salmon, Tit, Sparrow Hawk, 

 Thrushes, Sturgeon, and Pig (1873). In the mean time the Ray Society 

 had brought out his valuable "Monograph on the structure and devel- 

 opment of the Shoulder Girdle and Sternum in theVertebrata" (1868); 

 and his Presidential addresses to the Royal Microscopical Society ( 1 872, 

 1873), and notes on the Arch.neopteryx (1864), and the fossil Bird bones 

 from the Zebbug Cave, Malta (1865 and 1869), had been published. 

 Subsequently the Royal Society's Transactions contained his abun- 

 dantly illustrated memoirs on the skull of the Batrachia (1878 and 

 1880), of the Urodelous Amphibia (1877), the Common Snake (1878), 

 Sturgeon (1882), Lepidosteus (1882), Edentata (1886), Insectivora (1886), 

 and his elaborate memoir on the development of the wing of the Com- 

 mon Fowl (1888). In the "Reports of the Challenger ^^ is his memoir on 

 the Green Turtle (1880) ; and those on Tarsipes (Dundee, 1889), and the 

 Duck and the Auk (Dublin, 1890), are his last works. 



In former times a skull was taken as little more than a dry, symmet- 

 rical, bony structure ; or if it were the cartilaginous brain case of a 

 shark, it was to most a mere dried museum specimen. When however 

 the gradations of the elements of the skull, from embryonic beginnings, 

 were traced until their mutual relations and their homologues in other 



