xvin 



thrown on the wonderful completeness of organic uniformity and 

 singleness of design. How such studies can be carried on both by 

 minute dissection and the modern art of parallel slicing, and not by 

 one method alone, is to be gathered from his teaching. 



As a draughtsman, Mr. Parker particularly excelled, and the value 

 of his numerous memoirs wn.s greatly enhanced by the excellence of 

 the plates, the figures in which were drawn by himself. The article 

 on the Anatomy of Birds in the ' Encyclopedia Britannica ' also 

 bears evidence to his industry and knowledge. 



No man can have worked harder at science, in the intervals of 

 professional duties, than he did, and it is scarcely surprising that the 

 short intervals which he allowed himself for rest affected his health 

 and compelled him to limit his practice. Like a true naturalist, 

 however, he allowed his love of science to triumph over any desire 

 for woi'ldly gain, and it was well known to his friends that some of 

 his best scientific work was accomplished during actual physical 

 suffering, furnishing him, as he would say, with a pleasant distrac- 

 tion from his ailments. 



In 1864 he was elected into the Zoological Society without the 

 usual fees; and soon afterwards the Linnean Society paid him the 

 same high compliment. 



Mr. Parker was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1865, and 

 in the year following he received a Royal Medal for his comprehen- 

 sive, exact, and useful researches in the developmental osteology, or 

 embryonal morphology, of Vertebrates. Some few years afterwards 

 the Royal Society made him an annual grant to aid in the prosecution 

 of his studies ; and, when- that was discontinued, a pension from the 

 Crown was graciously and appropriately awarded to him. A 

 generous friend, belonging to a well-known Wesleyan family, more 

 than once presented 100 towards the cost of some of the numerous 

 plates illustrating his grand memoirs in the ' Philosophical Transac- 

 tions.' He was elected Fellow of King's College, London, in 1875. 

 In 1873 he had received the diploma as Member of the Royal College 

 of Surgeons, and was appointed Hunterian Professor of Com- 

 parative Anatomy and Physiology, Professor Flower being invalided 

 for a time ; and aferwards both held the Professorship conjointly. 

 His earnestness and wide views were well appreciated, opening up the 

 modern aspect of comparative anatomy, and showing that both in 

 Man and the Lower Vertebrates the wonderful structural develop- 

 ment of their bony framework should be studied in a strictlv 

 morphological rather than a teleological method, and that its stages 

 and resultant forms could be regarded only in the Darwinian aspect. 



These lectures, given in abstract in the medical journals, became 

 the basis of his 'Morphology of the Skull,' in editing which Mr. G. 

 T. Bettany ably assisted him \ and in a less scientific book, 'On 



