12 LIFE OF FLOWER 



pronounced by the President of the Royal Society, when 

 bestowing the Royal Gold Medal in recognition of his 

 services to zoology. 



" It is very largely due," runs the address, " to his 

 incessant and well-directed labour that the museum of 

 the Royal College of Surgeons at present contains the 

 most complete, the best ordered, and the most accessible 

 collection of materials for the study of vertebrate 

 structures extant." 



As regards his Hunterian lectures, it has been well 

 remarked that few could have any idea of the amount 

 of labour they involved, nor would any one be likely to 

 guess this from the ever-ready and earnest efforts of the 

 lecturer to give to others that knowledge he had so 

 laboriously, and yet so pleasantly, acquired within the 

 walls of the museum. 



In addition to the official Hunterian lectures, Flower 

 during this portion of his career commenced the delivery, 

 as opportunity occurred, of lectures of a much more 

 popular description, at the Royal Institution and else- 

 where, by means of which he appealed to a wider 

 audience than any that could be attracted to technical 

 discourses, and at the same time was enabled to give a 

 wide circulation to the discussion of subjects connected 

 with his own special studies which had more or less of 

 a general interest. In one of his earlier discourses of 

 this type he discussed at considerable detail the deformi- 

 ties produced in the human foot by badly-designed boots 

 or other covering among both civilised and barbarous 

 nations. Indeed, " fashion in deformity " was at all 

 times a favourite theme with the Hunterian Professor ; 

 and in a lecture on this subject he uttered, for him, a 



