96 LIFE OF FLOWER 



Lankester's obituary notice in Nature may be appro- 

 priately quoted : 



" He did his own work with his own hands, and 

 I have the best reason to know that he was so deeply 

 shocked and distressed by the inaccuracy which unfor- 

 tunately crept into some of the work of his distinguished 

 predecessor, Owen, through the employment of dissectors 

 and draughtsmen, whose work he did not sufficiently 

 supervise, that he himself determined to be exceptionally 

 careful and accurate in his own records and notes." 



In another passage of his notice the same writer 

 observes that : 



" Caution and reticence in generalisation certainly 

 distinguish all Flower's scientific writings. Whilst he 

 was on this account necessarily not known as the author 

 of stirring hypotheses, his statements of fact gained in 

 weight by his reputation for judgment and accuracy." 



Flower's zoological studies related entirely to the 

 vertebrates and almost exclusively to mammals, although 

 he devoted a few papers, such as the one on the 

 gular pouch of the great bustard, and that on the skull 

 of a cassowary, to birds. Other groups, I believe, he 

 never touched. In the earlier years of his scientific 

 career, at anyrate, his labours were in the main devoted 

 to the anatomical aspect of zoology, such subjects as 

 the dentition, osteology, and the structure and characters 

 of the brain and viscera claiming a much larger share of 

 his attention than was bestowed on the myology. In 

 latter years the classification of the major groups of the 

 mammalia received much attention from Flower. Not 

 that he was in any way what is nowadays called 

 a systematist in zoology, that is to say, he took no 



