128 LIFE OF FLOWER 



forms assumed by the stomach in a large number of the 

 ordinal and family groups ; especial attention being 

 directed to the remarkable complexity of that organ in 

 the porpoise. The other, which was published in 

 Nature, and in abstract in the Report of the British 

 Association, dealt with the arrangement and nomen- 

 clature of the lobes of the mammalian liver. It is, 

 perhaps, one of the most valuable of the author's con- 

 tributions to visceral anatomy ; and introduced order 

 and precision where confusion had previously reigned. 

 The names then given to the different lobes of the liver 

 have been very generally adopted in zoological and 

 anatomical literature. 



In 1873 Flower delivered before the Royal Institu- 

 tion a lecture on palaeontological evidence of gradual 

 modification of animal forms, which is published in the 

 Proceedings of that body for the same year. In this he 

 touched on the important evidence afforded by the dis- 

 coveries which had then been recently made in North 

 America in favour of the derivation of one animal form 

 from another, directing particular attention to the case for 

 the evolution of the horse. Another paper on the same 

 subject appears in the British Medicaljournal for 1874; 

 while, as noticed below, Sir William again lectured on 

 palaeontological evolution in 1876. 



The year 1874 was noteworthy, so far as palaeontology 

 is concerned, by the appearance in the Philosophical Trans- 

 actions of the Royal Society of a paper by Flower on 

 part of a remarkable mammalian skull from Patagonia, 

 described under the name of Homalodontotherium cun- 

 ninghami. In justice to the author, it should be said 

 that he was not responsible for the undue length of the 



