1 60 SIR WILLIAM FLOWER CHAP. 



interesting branch of the whole family. It had been 

 continually changing while its relations stood still. 

 It had increased in bulk, and in the length of its 

 neck, until it was difficult to find anything now more 

 perfect than its organisation. It had grown in size, 

 for there were extinct relations no bigger than a 

 hare. Its neck had grown longer, it had dropped 

 its toes, lengthened its legs, changed its teeth, and 

 from being one of a group of marsh -living slow 

 animals had become the best adapted of all creatures 

 for swiftness and for living on hard ground and on 

 hard fare. 



In the following year he gave a similar lecture at 

 the same place on "Cattle, Past and Present," and 

 at the Royal Institution another on the "Wings of 

 Birds." In June 1886 he lectured at the Zoological 

 Gardens on the " Pigs and their Allies "; and in the 

 autumn at Onslow College on " Fins, Wings, and 

 Hands," a lecture which, further elaborated, he 

 delivered in the June following at the London 

 Institution. His autumn holiday was spent partly 

 in Switzerland with his wife and daughters Vera 

 and Geraldine, and partly in a visit to Lord and 

 Lady Wharncliffe at Wortley. In 1887 the first 

 General Guide to the Natural History Museum 

 was issued. Special guides in the departments of 

 zoology, mineralogy, and geology had been obtain- 

 able before. But this, though marked "under 

 revision," was practically the foundation of the 

 present General Guide, in which the account of the 



