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once again a primary association with Huxley, in the preparation of 

 whose zoological masterpiece "The Crayfish" Parker performed an 

 honourable service. 



The duties of office in New Zealand imposed upon Parker the 

 Curatorship of the Otago University Museum and the conduct of a 

 Botanical Class. Before leaving England he had established a reput- 

 ation as a pioneer in the application of modern dry methods of micro- 

 chemical technique to the study of vegetable histology, in a noteworthy 

 paper read before, the R. Microscopical Society of Loudon during March 

 1879, and shortly after the commencement of work at the Antipodes 

 he announced (Trans. N. Zealand Institute for 1881) the discovery of 

 sieve-tubes in the marine Algae (Macro cystis). While for the latter 

 Parker's memory will find a place in the history of botanical dis- 

 covery, in the performance of his curatorial duties he will be remem- 

 bered as having most successfully overcome the difficulties of pre- 

 servation of the cartilaginous fish skeleton in a dry state, as may be 

 witnessed in that of a large Carcharodon preserved in the British 

 Museum of Natural History and in others at Otago, Cambridge, and else- 

 where. 



In 1892 Parker paid a visit to Europe, returning in good health 

 the following year. Family bereavement in the death of his wife then 

 overtook him and laid the foundations of an illness from which he 

 never recovered. Complicated by repeated attacks of influenza, this 

 resulted in death, and during his long period of sufi'ering and anxciety 

 the like of which has killed many a man he worked on undaunted, 

 leaving unfinished an elementary book to have been entitled „Biology 

 for Beginners" and some observations upon a series of Emeu Chicks, 

 including those collected by Prof. R. Semon during his recent sojourn 

 in the Australian bush, which he was investigating in conjunction with 

 Mr. J. P. Hill, the renowned discoverer of the allantoic placenta of 

 Perameles. With these and other plans for future work well matu- 

 red he has been cruelly torn from us, but while his memory will be 

 a lasting heritage to those who knew and loved him, to the scientific 

 world at large there has just been issued his final completed work, 

 viz. a general Text-Book of Elementary Zoology of some 4000 pages 

 in two volumes, upon which during the last 5 years he was engaged 

 together with his staunch friend and colleague Prof. W, A. Haswell 

 F. R. S. of the Sydney University. In this book, rich in original ana- 

 tomical drawings, his influence will endure; and he will always be re- 

 membered as an earnest, loving, man who performed his duties with 

 a skillful hand, intent only on good work, the advancement of knowledge, 

 and the consequent betterment of the human race, an anatomist for 

 whose life the world may be said to have been the richer and his fellow 

 creatures the happier. 



Parker was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a D. Sc. of London. 

 He was also an Associate of the Linnean Society of London and a 

 Member of other Scientific Societies at home, in the Colonies, and 

 on the Continent of Europe. He took a pioneer's part in the literary 



