LECTURES 105 



Whenever the Professor came to these outlines he 

 reHgiously took a sip of water. Whether it was the 

 time of day or whether it was that we students were 

 all absorbed in Comparative Embryology and in Mor- 

 phology, the attendance was always small. I went 

 during my second and third year, and at times was the 

 sole auditor. Not that that made the least difference 

 to the Professor. He steadily and relentlessly read on 

 — " the majority of you now present know," " most of 

 my audience are well aware," and similar phrases left 

 me in considerable doubt as to what parts of me were 

 " the majority " and which the " most." 



Where the Professor excelled was in informal talks in 

 his room after lecture and in his home in the Old Lodge 

 at Magdalene College. He was a zoologist, not a necrolo- 

 gist. As far as his lameness had permitted he had always 

 been an open-air man. Owing to the vastness of the 

 subject, every student of zoology must have a special, 

 favourite group of animals, and Newton cared most 

 about birds. But he was no " mere ornithologist," as 

 his unsuccessful opponent at the election to the pro- 

 fessorship described him in 1866. His shilling text- 

 book " Zoology," one of the Manuals of Elementary 

 Science, published by the Society for the Promotion of 

 Christian Knowledge, was a model of its kind, and 

 undoubtedly should be better known, for in clear and 

 clean-cut Enghsh it covered practically every branch of 

 zoology, and to the younger student presented an 

 ordered framework upon which he could hang his 

 scattered and isolated, but none the less real, items of 

 knowledge. 



Newton's Sunday evenings were great institutions 

 in the life of all of us who cared about biological science 

 thirty odd years ago and onwards till his death. They 

 began in a small way ; when the Professor first became 



