40 LIFE OF FLOWER 



general osteology of man, then with his dentition, and, 

 thirdly, with the special characters of the osteology and 

 dentition of the different races of the human species 

 a line of study which had formed the subject of several 

 of his lectures as Hunterian Professor. Nor is this by 

 any means all, for the introduction to this volume forms 

 a valuable compendium of the principles and rules of the 

 science of craniology ; the remarks on the mode of 

 measuring skulls, and the method of calculating from 

 such measurements " indices," whereby skulls of different 

 types can be compared with one another with exactness, 

 being models of accuracy and clearness, and rendered 

 the more valuable from the tables by which they are 

 accompanied. For measuring the cubic contents of 

 skulls, Flower was convinced that mustard-seed formed 

 the best and most accurate medium. 



In addition to its value as a summary of the contents 

 of that portion of the museum of which it treats, and as 

 a precis of its chief author's views at that time as to the 

 classification of mammals, the second part of the Cata- 

 logue is of special importance on account of containing 

 an expression of opinion on the subject of zoological 

 nomenclature a subject on which Flower had previously 

 spoken in no uncertain tones in his Presidential Address 

 to the Zoological section of the British Association at 

 the meeting held in Dublin in 1878, which is republished 

 in Essays on Museums. 



The keynote of Flower's introduction to his Catalogue 

 was the urgent need of uniformity of nomenclature 

 among zoologists ; and on this, and the subject generally, 

 he expressed himself as follows : 



" As there is no matter of such great importance in a 



