LIN>EAN SOCIETr OF LONDON. 63 



time and liable to give a wrong impression of his true nature 1o 

 straii<?ers and to those who did not knovv how to take him. 

 fundamentally he was eminently reasonable and nice, and exceed- 

 ingly kiud-liearted and sympathetic, many a kind action helping 

 the Zoological Societv's employes or friends less well-off than 

 himself standing to his credit. 



In sport and athletics he had no interest wliatever, and he 

 probably never played a game in his life. Hence the time most 

 boys and young men give to these pastimes he had devoted to the 

 cultivation of his innate literary and artistic tastes. His acquaint- 

 ance with the classics was quite unusual in a scientific Jiian, and 

 amongst modern writers of fiction his personal friend Meredith, and 

 Hardy, were his favourites. He was devoted, too, to architecture 

 and paintings, especially of tiie Italian schools. But, apart from 

 pathology, the outstanding interest of his life was music. I have 

 heard him described as one of the best amateur pianists in London, 

 and his friends will long remember the social gatherings in the 

 large music room in his house in Hall Eoad, 8t. John's Wood. 

 Incongruous as it may seem, he added to these attributes a know- 

 ledge of cookery any cJief might envy, and an appetite and delicacy 

 of palate which can only be described as Epicurean. Exceedingly 

 sociable and a great talker he was welcomed everywhere, much 

 of his spare time, which was little enough, being spent at the 

 Sa\ ile Club. He was also a prominent member of the Omar Club 

 and one of the founders and treasurer of the Lucretian Hinin"- 

 Club. 



A peculiarity in his method of pathological research was that 

 he never touched a specimen with his hands, never even using 

 indiarubber gloves for the purpose. The bodies were opened and 

 the organs sliced under his directions by the laboratory assistant 

 while he stood by and examined the sections with a readiiig-glass. 

 The macroscopic appearance of all the organs, whether diseased 

 or sound, was noted on paper at the time, to be copied later in 

 the Zoological Society's pathological books, and to these records 

 were subsequently added the results of his examination of the slides 

 containing blood-smears and sections of the diseased organs. The 

 daily methodical pursuit of this line of research on practically all 

 the vertebrated animals that died in the Gardens for a space of ten 

 years filled 20 volumes of records of the incidence of the diseases 

 of wild animals in captivity. A brief statistical abstract of the 

 i-esults was annually published in the ' Proceedings ' of the Zoolo- 

 gical Society; but it was Dr. Plimmer's intention, if time allowed, 

 to embody the main facts in a text-book on animal pathology, 

 which would have been of the greatest value to those coming after 

 him. One of the most important discoveries he made was the 

 mycotic nature of the jaw- disease to which kangaroos and small 

 ante]o])es so frequenily succumb. He w as, I recollect, profoundly 

 interested in the evidence of cancer running in families supplied 

 by a particular stock of wolves, inbred in the Gardens for tlu'ee 

 generations ; and he established, amongst other conclusions, a 

 remarkable correlation between nephritis, enteritis, and affections 



