LIFE OF FLOWER 51 



In 1872 Flower's Huuterian lectures were devoted 

 to the subject of the digestive organs of mammals ; 

 these lectures being reported, with illustrations, in 

 the Medical Times and Gazette of the same 

 year. 



Perhaps the most important and certainly the most 

 voluminous of these lectures was the series on the 

 " Comparative Anatomy of Man," which extended over 

 several years, the course for 1880 dealing especially 

 with the skulls of the Fiji, Tongan, and Samoan islanders. 

 The subject of anthropology, or the study of the 

 different races of mankind from a zoological stand- 

 point, shared indeed with that of the Cetacea a large 

 part of the Professor's attention, and the two together 

 formed, perhaps, his favourite lines of investigation. 

 In regard to the problems presented by the human 

 race when viewed from this standpoint, Flower has 

 expressed himself as follows : 



" Comparative anatomy is specially occupied in study- 

 ing the differences between one man and another, 

 estimating and classifying their differences, and especi- 

 ally discriminating between such differences as are only 

 individual variations (variations which, when extreme, are 

 relegated to the department of the teratologist) and 

 those that are inherited, and so become characters of 

 different groups and races of the human species. 

 Physical anthropology, moreover, extends its range 

 beyond merely comparing and registering these differ- 

 ences of structure. It also occupies itself with 

 endeavouring to trace their cause, and the circumstances 

 which may occasion their modifications. It endeavours 

 also to form a classification of the different groups of 



