xxxvi Annual Report of the Council. 



generalisation, and stood side by side with Huxley, Rolleston, 

 Humphry, and Turner in the battle for their convictions. 



In the forefront of his purely zoological labours must 

 undoubtedly be placed his researches upon the Cetacea. These 

 huge animals can only be adequately studied by those who have 

 the resources of large and wealthy institutions at their disposal, 

 and this was the case with Flower for practically the whole of his 

 career. Of these advantages he availed himself to the full, 

 and strove to give not merely to specialists but also to the general 

 public the fruits of his study. With this view he arranged that 

 series of combined skeletons and models in the Natural History 

 Museum, which is the admiration and the envy of every similar 

 institution in the world. Among other groups of Mammalia we 

 must notice his discoveries that in the Marsupials only one 

 molar is preceded by a milk tooth, and that the large extinct 

 Thylacoleo was not a carnivore but of herbivorous habits ; he 

 also published an improved classification of the Carnivora based 

 on the structure of the base of the skull, and his attempt to apply 

 a systematic terminology to the varied forms of the mammalian 

 liver was an elaborate and suggestive piece of anatomical research. 



The study of the Mammalia naturally led on to that of 

 mankind, and Sir William Flower's anthropological writings are 

 of no slight importance. In ])articular, his "Catalogue of the 

 Specimens in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons " 

 (1879 and 1884) has already taken rank as a classic in this 

 department. One of the most striking of his many discourses 

 was entitled "Fashion in Deformity," and has been published as 

 a separate work and enjoyed the complimentary, if unprofitable, 

 distinction of an American reprint. In it the author repeats 

 with intensified emphasis the indictment brought so long ago as 

 1650 by J. Bulwer against the "deformed thief" fashion for 

 defacing and clipping nature's coin " itistampt with her image 

 and superscription on the body of men," showing that the 

 civilised are little, if at all, less guilty than the uncivilised races 

 in this respect. 



It is, however, no derogation to Sir \\'illiam flower's 



