Annual Report of the Council. xxxv 



occupied the chair of the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science. He received the degree of LL. I), from the 

 University of Edinburgh in 1SS4, as well as the honour of 

 knighthood, and was elected in the following year President of 

 the British Association for the IJirmingham meeting. In 1886 

 this Society elected him an honorary member. He received 

 many other signs of recognition, and died full of honours, having 

 lived to the full a long and active life. It would be miproper 

 to close this notice without saying that he was beloved by his 

 friends, and remarkable for his gentleness to everyone with 

 whom he came into contact. He passed away on November 

 19th, 1S99, and his loss will be very widely felt on both sides of 

 the Atlantic. W. B. D. 



By the death of Sir William Henry Flower, K.C.B., 

 F.R.S., natural history has lost a gifted and conscientious 

 worker, and the philosophy of museum arrangement an 

 enthusiastic and successful exponent. Born in 1S31, the son 

 of Mr. Edward Fordham Flower, the well-known opponent of 

 the bearing-rein, he inherited a love for and an interest in the 

 animal world. He was educated for the medical profession, 

 and, after a distinguished career as a student, joined the Army 

 Medical Department and served in the Crimean War. On his 

 return to England he filled for several years the post of Lecturer 

 in Anatomy at the Middlesex Hospital. Here he discharged 

 the additional duties of Curator of the Museum with such ability 

 that, in 1S61, he was appointed to the charge of the Hunterian 

 Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons, a position which he 

 held for nearly four-and-twenty years, when he succeeded Sir 

 Richaid Owen as Director of the Natural History Museum. 



The life work of Sir William Flower falls naturally into two 

 divisions : original zoological researches and the organization 

 and management of museums. His scientific studies dated from 

 a period anterior to the publication of the " Origin of Species," 

 and, with that candid and judicious temper which always 

 distinguished him, he at once realised the value of the new 



