284 Britain's Heritage of Science 



The President of the Royal Society said, when presenting 

 Sir William with a royal medal, " it is very largely due to his 

 incessant and well-directed labours that the Museum of 

 the Royal College of Surgeons at present contains the most 

 complete, the best ordered, and the most accessible collec- 

 tions of materials for the study of vertebrate structures 

 extant." 



Flower succeeded Huxley in the Hunterian Professor- 

 ship at the Royal College of Surgeons, and his lectures met 

 with great success, in fact, he was soon becoming the fore- 

 most authority on mammals, and his work on " Mammals, 

 Living and Extinct," which he published in London in 

 conjunction with Lydekker, is still regarded as a classic. 

 Perhaps if he had a favourite group it was the Cetacea, and 

 when he succeeded Owen as Superintendent of the Natural 

 History Museum at Kensington, he took the greatest 

 pleasure in having a large room specially constructed to house 

 their gigantic skeletons. His well-known " Osteology of 

 Mammals," in which he was assisted by Dr. Hans Gadow, 

 was, even if a little dry, one of the most accurate and com- 

 plete of student's books. Another side of his work was 

 Anthropology. He published innumerable papers on the 

 various races of mankind, fully utilising the valuable material 

 he had at the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1879 he was 

 elected President of the Zoological Society, and held the 

 position until his death. His energy greatly increased the 

 value and use of the gardens. In 1898 failing health com- 

 pelled him to retire from the position. Sir William was 

 a handsome, well-set-up man, always courteous to strangers, 

 with a ready, fluent address. 



One of the unexpected results of Darwin's investigations 

 was to induce a number of the younger school of zoologists 

 to take up the study of Embryology. The most brilliant 

 of these was Francis Maitland Balfour (1851-1882). He 

 was educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge. 

 Even as a student acting under the advice of Michael 

 Foster, at that time Praelector of Physiology in Trinity 

 College he devoted himself to clearing up some points in 

 the development of the chick. After taking his degree in 

 1873, he worked on the embryonic history of the Elasmo- 



