Sir William Flower. 77 



other, " Whales, Past and Present, and their Probable Origin," at the 

 Royal Institution. In concluding the latter he points out that the 

 difficulty of deriving the whales from the primitive and probably omni- 

 vorous Ungulates is not great, since the aquatic branch might easily 

 have gradually become more and more piscivorous, the purely terrestrial 

 members more conclusively graminivorous. 



The foregoing great labours of his life consistently culminated in 

 the magnificent series of whales it was one of his last duties to 

 arrange and exhibit, with remarkable ingenuity, in the hall which he 

 had secured for them in the British Museum (Natural History). 

 While the skeleton can be studied from one side, the coloured outline 

 of the body, in papier-mache is placed on the other, and numerous 

 drawings in water-colour (many by one of his daughters) still further 

 enable the visitor to grasp the form and structure of these gigantic 

 denizens of the deep, or of remote rivers. Here ranged, side by side, 

 are giant finners and small porpoises, narwals and killers, the toothed 

 whales having their heads one way, the whalebone whales having theirs- 

 in the opposite direction. No more fitting memorial of the skilful 

 hand of the leading European authority on the subject could be found 

 than this marvellous and unique display of forms rare it is true but 

 replete with, the most interesting habits and, in many cases, remarkable 

 intelligence. 



For some years after entering on his work at the College Museum, 

 the brains of mammals formed a favourite study, and, besides the 

 paper already mentioned, there were others "On the Brain of the 

 Siamang," "On the Brain of the Javan Loris," "The Brain of 

 Echidna," "The Brain of the Howling Monkey," "Cerebral Com- 

 missures in Marsupials and Monotremes, " the latter in reply to Sir R. 

 Owen's paper on zoological names of characteristic parts and homo- 

 logical interpretations of their modifications and beginnings espe- 

 cially in reference to the connecting fibres of the brain. 



Amongst the papers which had an important influence in zoology was 

 that in 1867, " On the Development and Succession of Teeth in the Mar- 

 supials. " He showed that there was but a single tooth (hindmost 

 premolar) on each side of each jaw \\ith a vertical predecessor or un- 

 doubted milk-tooth. In the kangaroos, opossums, and thylacines this 

 single tooth is homologous with that most persistent in typical diphyo- 

 donts, viz., the posterior milk molar replaced by the posterior pre- 

 molar. It is interesting that he interpreted the teeth in front of the 

 latter as corresponding to the permanent set, an opinion the recent 

 discovery of rudimentary milk-teeth substantiates. In the same group 

 he discovered that the extinct Thylacoleo carnifex of Owen was not a 

 carnivore, but, probably, a herbivorous marsupial, most nearly allied to 

 the rat-kangaroos, yet having special features of its own in the dimin- 

 ished number of true molars, the great size of the trenchant anterior 



