XV 



and Crowland. Both when living under his father's roof, and in his 

 holidays afterwards, he kept many pet animals, and dissected what- 

 ever he could get, including a donkey and many birds. Of the latter 

 he prepared skeletons ; and of these he made large drawings at 

 Market-Overton, which of late years he had some thought of pub- 

 lishing as an atlas of the osteology of birds. 



Without the advantages of a university education, and with none 

 of those aids to learning afforded by the science schools of the 

 present day, he owed all the knowledge which he acquired to an 

 intense love of nature, prompting and developing a taste for original 

 research ; and. this, in spite of many obstacles, he assiduously culti- 

 vated to the last, 



In December, 1844, he came to London, and entered Charing- 

 Cross Hospital as a medical student. Having had an introduction to 

 Dr. Todd, he was cordially received by him and encouraged to work 

 in his physiological laboratory at King's College; and for a time 

 he was prosector at Dr. Todd's lectures. He qualified as Licentiate of 

 the Society of Apothecaries in 1849, and commenced to practice at 

 Tachbrook Street, Pimlico. Soon afterwards he married Miss Elizabeth 

 Jeffery. His wife's patient calmnt'ss under all difficulties and trials 

 was a true blessing to a man of Mr. Parker's excitable temperament 

 and indifferent health; and her unselfish life and wide-spread in- 

 fluence for good are well known in and beyond the family circle. 

 Unfortunately, he was left a widower about four months before his 

 death. He left three daughters and four sons. Of the latter, one is 

 u Fellow of the Royal Society, and Professor of Zoology and Com- 

 parative Anatomy in the University of Otago, New Zealand ; the 

 second is Professor of Biology in the University College at Cardiff, 

 South Wales ; the third is an able draughtsman and lithographer ; 

 and the fourth has taken his diplomas of L.R.C.P. and M.R.C.S. 



Mr. Parker had a good father, courteous and gentle by nature, 

 conscientious, aud earnest in business, who had worked hard to be 

 able to give even his youngest son, Mr. W. K. Parker, " a start in 

 life." From his placid and thoughtful mother he probably inherited 

 much of his love of reading and readiness to learn. 



Always energetic, in spite of ill-health, Mr. Parker enthusiastically 

 carried on his medical work and his natural-history studies, especially 

 in the microscopical structure of animal aud vegetable tissues. 

 Polyzoa and Foraminifera, collected on a visit to Bognor, and from 

 among sponge-sands and Oriental sea-shells, especially engaged his 

 attention. Having sorted, mounted, and drawn numbers of these 

 Microzoa, he was induced, about 1856, by his friends W. Crawford 

 Williamson and T. Rupert Jones to work at the Foraminifera syste- 

 matically. His paper on the Miliolitidce of the Indian Seas (' Transact. 

 Microscopical Society,' 1858), and a joint paper (with T. R. Jones) 



