Sir William Flower. 75 



of Extinct to Existing Mammalia," while those of 1880 were on 

 the "Comparative Anatomy of Man, especially skulls from Viti 

 Levu and Vamia Levu Islands, compared with the Tongans and 

 Samoans. " Few have any idea of the great amount of labour such 

 courses involve, yet no one would have imagined this from the ever- 

 ready and earnest efforts of the lecturer to give to others that JLDOW- 

 ledge, which it had been a pleasure to gain amidst the treasures of the 

 Museum. 



On his appointment to the Museum of the College of Surgeons, Sir 

 William retired from practice, yet, though his subsequent career was 

 devoted to science, he never lost touch with or interest in his old pro- 

 fession. This loyalty has been one of the most characteristic features 

 of the scientific followers of medicine from early times, and is familiar 

 to us in the lives of John Hunter, John Goodsir, Richard Owen, 

 Thomas Huxley, B. W. Carpenter, George Busk, George Allman, 

 John Hutton Balfour, George Johnston, Strethill Wright, and many 

 others. Broader views are engrafted on medicine, and science is 

 strengthened by the inclusion of such men in both, and it is well if this 

 tradition is cherished in the present and in the future. 



No comparative anatomist in recent times has more devotedly or 

 with greater ability and accuracy studied the mammals ; indeed the 

 majority of his contributions to science, many of them of a, very elabo- 

 rate character, deal with this subject. Moreover, in every instance he 

 has enlarged our knowledge, not only of the species, but, by acute and 

 comprehensive views, he has extended that of the group ; and since 

 the range of his contributions in this department passes, with a few 

 exceptions, from the Monotremes to the Primates, his influence in 

 moulding the present literature of the subject has been immense. 

 Amongst his earlier contributions, after entering on duty at the College 

 of Surgeons Museum, are papers on the anatomy of the Primates 

 including both old and new world forms. His researches on the brain 

 of the higher apes formed an important feature in the discussions 

 which took place between Owen and Huxley in regard to the posterior 

 lobe of the brain, the posterior cornu, and the hippocamus minor 

 being or not being diagnostic of separation between man and the 

 monkeys. 



Owen, at the Cambridge meeting of the British Association in 1862, 

 maintained from casts of the human brain in spirit, and from a cast 

 of the interior of the gorilla's skull that in man the posterior lobes 

 of the brain overlapped the cerebellum, whereas in the gorilla they did 

 not ; that these characters were constant, and therefore that he placed 

 man with his overlapping posterior lobes, the existence of a posterior 

 cornu in the lateral ventricle, and the presence of a hippocamus minor 

 in the posterior cornu under the special division Archencephala. 

 Moreover, he grouped with these features the distinctive character of 



