4 8 LIFE OF FLOWER 



from experience of these lectures as a whole. Never- 

 theless the one course was amply sufficient to con- 

 vince him of the lecturer's special qualifications for 

 his task. Flower was indeed an ideal lecturer, endowed 

 with a fine presence, a suave and yet penetrating voice, 

 great power of expression, a slow and impressive 

 delivery, and, above all, an absolute mastery of his 

 subject (whatever it might be) down to the minutest 

 and apparently most insignificant details. For him, 

 every detail of structure, whether functional or rudi- 

 mentary, had a significance and a meaning, and he 

 would never rest satisfied till he had found out what 

 that meaning was, and had laid the whole of the 

 evidence on which he based his conclusions before his 

 audience. That audience, which generally included a 

 considerable number of the elder members of the 

 medical profession, as well as many well-known 

 zoologists and anatomists, invariably listened with rapt 

 attention to the story told so admirably by the accom- 

 plished lecturer. 



Of these lectures, the first course, delivered in 1870 

 on the Osteology of the Mammalia, is perhaps the one 

 which has rendered Flower most widely known 

 among zoological students, since, as noticed below, 

 it became the basis of a valuable little volume. 



His introductory lecture in February 1870 was 

 largely devoted to the subject of plan, or " type," in 

 Nature, and to the evidence in favour of the transmuta- 

 tion of species and evolution of organised beings a 

 doctrine which was at that time by no means so widely 

 accepted, even among scientific men, as it is at the 

 present day. In this address the lecturer prefaced his 



