HUNTER IAN LECTURES, 



1844. 



INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 



CHARACTERS OF THE CLASSES OE VERTEBRATE ANIMALS. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen, 

 In appearing before you on tlie present occasion, again honoured by 

 the Council with the arduous and responsible duties of the Hunterian 

 Professorship, it might be expected that time, and the repetition of 

 their performance, would have abated much of that anxiety and diffi- 

 dence which naturally oppress whoever undertakes to expound from 

 this place, and before this audience, the principles of Comparative 

 Anatomy and Physiology. Seven successive annual deliveries of the 

 Hunterian Lectures have, indeed, in some measure familiarised me 

 with this department of the expository labours of the Museum ; 

 but they have also tended to impress me with the necessity for 

 increased exertion in order to their successful fulfilment. And 

 now, more than on any previous occasion, when we have assembled 

 in the Theatre of the College under the auspices of a new Charter, 

 honoured, for the second time, by a special mark of the Royal 

 condescension and favour *, it more especially behoves us, each in 

 his respective sphere, and according to his capacity, to redouble our 

 efforts to maintain, and, if possible, to raise, the high character of 

 British Surgery. 



Called by the fruitful principle of the division of labour to the 

 duties of the conservation, extension, and exposition of the pre- 

 parations which enrich the Museum, — impressed by a sense 

 of the intimate connection of the present estimation of Surgical 

 Science with the labours in Comparative Anatomy of that immortal 

 Physiologist by whom the Museum was founded, — convinced that 

 what has before reflected lustre on the name of Surgeon must 

 continue to have the same influence, — I have felt it especially 



* The present Charter of the Royal College of Surgeons was granted September 

 4th, 1843. 

 VOL. II. B 



