152 NATURAL SCIENCE. Feb.. 



His enthusiasm was infectious, and he attracted large audiences to 

 his popular lectures — audiences composed chiefly, not of " those who 

 with itching ears run about after popular preachers," but of those 

 who had been inspired with interest in biological science by his 

 previous lectures. 



The Manchester Microscopical Society, of which he was presi- 

 dent for the last seven years of his life, is composed of enthusiastic 

 naturalists, and it is largely because of the earnestness which his 

 example has called forth that wealthy mill-owners and justices of the 

 peace sit in the meetings of the society, unconscious of social 

 inequality, cheek-by-jowl with poor men who work for a weekly wage; 

 and to that same beneficent influence may be ascribed the fact that, 

 under the auspices of the society, systematic courses of biological 

 instruction are undertaken by teachers Avhose services are given 

 gratuitously and willingly. 



Marshall was only 41 years of age, and there was every reason 

 to believe that in the next few years he would have accomplished 

 far greater scientific work than he had as yet done ; but there 

 are few men who have done so much for the advancement of 

 education in so short a time as he has, and yet have found time 

 for even a little scientific work— and his scientific work is more 

 than a little. 



Like his friend, F. M. Balfour, who met with a similar untimely 

 death on the mountains, he was a keen embryologist. He thoroughly 

 believed in the theory of " recapitulation," and never lost an 

 opportunity of convincing others of its truth. At Leeds, in 1890, he 

 said : — 



" That ontogeny really is a repetition of phylogeny must, I think, 

 be admitted, in spite of the numerous and various ways in which the 

 ancestral history may be distorted during actual development." 



That sentence expresses the belief which formed the basis 

 of his teaching. That theory was the source of the inspiration 

 under which his latest published work was written, i.e., his 

 " Vertebrate Embryology," published only a few months before 

 his death. 



Of that work no review has appeared in the pages of Natural 

 Science, but Professor Lankester, in reviewing it in Nature, says : — 

 " It is not too much to say that he has produced a most valuable, 

 clear, and masterly exposition of the knoAvn facts of the develop- 

 mental history of leading types of vertebrata." It may be added that 

 the book is very liable to give the impression to the reader that it is 

 chiefly a compilation. But this is not correct. He repeated the 

 observations of his predecessors wherever it was possible to do so, 

 and published the results. It is not surprising that his predecessors 

 were often right, and where they were right, he reproduced their 

 accounts, and even their figures. Many of the figures, however, 

 were corrected before they were reproduced, and the book contains 



