98 LIFE OF FLOWER 



the species of giraffe typified by G. camelopardalis of the 

 Egyptian Sudan and Abyssinia), was practically in its 

 infancy during the active life-time of Flower, and it is 

 doubtful how he would have approved of the extent to 

 which it has been subsequently carried. Nevertheless, 

 that he appreciated the practice of recognising minute 

 local differences of colour, size, etc., in the same species 

 of mammals is evident from an incident within the 

 writer's own knowledge, which occurred at the Natural 

 History Museum, when a tray containing the local 

 phases of one of the species of the small squirrel-like 

 rodents known as chipmunks was submitted to his 

 notice; his remark being that such variations from a 

 common type ought in nowise to be ignored, if we 

 wished to make our knowledge of animals anything like 

 complete, and that the simplest way of indicating such 

 differences was to assign them distinct names. 



In a general way, however, it may be said that Sir 

 William's sympathies were with the wider and more 

 philosophical aspects of zoology rather than with the 

 details of specific and sub-specific distinction (which, by 

 the way, have scarcely any more right to be regarded 

 as real philosophical science than has stamp-collecting) r j 

 and that, from a systematic standpoint, his interest was 

 very largely concentrated on the relationships existing 

 between the mammals of to-day and their extinct pre- 

 decessors. Several of his lectures and papers, and one 

 especially of his separate works (that on The Horse) 

 were indeed devoted to this aspect of the subject ; and 



1 The present writer has the less compunction in making this assertion, 

 seeing that he himself is responsible for naming no inconsiderable number 

 of these so-called sub-species of mammals. 



