48 



trust for the national benefit. It is open to the public on certain 

 days of the week, and a series of twenty-four lectures are 

 annually delivered on comparative anatomy, illustrated by the 

 preparations in the museum. The paper then alluded to Hunter's 

 disposition, habits, and the results of his life's work. The men 

 of his own day — his colleagues and fellow workers— respected 

 him as a master in anatomy and as a safe operator, but few 

 grasped the leading idea of his biological work, and they looked 

 on his researches among the lower forms of life as idle curiosity. 

 What would they now think when this branch of science is carried 

 on so very much further by the powerful modern microscopes. 

 Even Sir Joseph Banks, P.E.S., in 1793 expressed his opinion 

 that the museum "was not an object of importance to the 

 o-eneral study of natural history, or indeed to any branch of 

 science except that of medicine." So uucheered by contem- 

 porary approbation or encouragement he worked on, establishing 

 principles which have ever since been the foundation of zoologi- 

 cal science, and especially of that branch of it called medicine. 

 His speculations concerning the mystery of life he summed up 

 as follows : " Mere composition of matter does not give life, for 

 a dead body has all the composition it over had ; life is a property 

 Ave do not understand, we can only see the necessary steps lead- 

 ing towards it." Among the matters which he touched upon 

 was that of fossils, of which he made a classification on Hnes 

 similar to those on which he had arranged living animals. Irom 

 their nature and mode of distribution he concluded that there 

 had been many and long-continued variations in the level of the 

 land, and also in climate. It does not distinctly appear that he 

 ever fairly grasped Darwin's doctrine of tlie origin of species from 

 variation. He had a ghmmering of it, for we hnd him writing, 

 " If we were to take a series of animals from the most imperfect 

 to the most perfect, we should probably find an imperfect animal 

 corresponding to some stage of the most perfect." Such then 

 was the aim and work of the illustrious man who was the first 

 to arrange the facts of comparative anatomy in a scientific man- 

 ner, and who was the founder of the vastly improved art of 

 surgery of the present day. 



A CHAT ABOUT HERALDRY. 



Bu ALFRED STRANGE. April Vdth, 1886. 



In order to keep up the 'spirit' of the title of this Paper a 

 syllabus was j)laced in the hands of the Members in which it 

 was indicated that the present "chat" on "Heraldry" would 



