82 Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



On the resignation of Sir Richard Owen, whose long-continued and 

 conspicuous labours had rendered British Comparative Anatomy 

 esteemed everywhere, there was but one man whose life and 

 work, and whose fame, pointed him out as Owen's successor, viz., Sir 

 William Flower, and, accordingly, in 1884, he was appointed Director 

 of the great Museum of Natural History at South Kensington. 

 Thus slowly but surely the goal was reached by him who as a boy 

 treasured and arranged a few zoological specimens that fortune 

 sent in his way, and who in manhood left a splendid record of his able 

 administration and artistic methods at the Museum of the Royal 

 College of Surgeons. His long experience and natural gifts thus gave 

 to the National Museum one of the most accomplished, courtly, and 

 wise, administrators of the age ; a man not only distinguished as an 

 original investigator, but one whose high tone and affability won the 

 hearts of officials as well as those of the public. 



The great building in which he was henceforth to labour was the 

 product of the genius of his predecessor, to whom he ever paid a just 

 tribute for his gigantic labours, yet early in its history the keen eye 

 of Sir William, while admitting the beauty of form, proportion, colour 

 and material, looked in vain for administrative offices, libraries, labora- 

 tories, lecture-rooms, and, above all, accommodation for the vast and 

 ever increasing collections necessary for scientific research. Some of 

 these defects have, it is true, been remedied, but the result falls far 

 short of the ideal which this Prince of Museum Directors* evolved from 

 his unique experiences. However this may have been, he set himself 

 with characteristic ability and energy to labour in his new sphere, and 

 with such effect that the fame of the great Museum and its Director 

 became cosmopolitan. The entrance-hall and neighbouring galleries 

 soon teemed with unique groups, which, even to the popular mind, 

 afforded an insight into the variations of animals, and their adaptation 

 to the colour of their surroundings. Thus in one case were shown 

 the variations of the canary, in another the remarkable varieties of 

 the pigeon in domestication jacobins, pouters, fantails, tumblers, 

 carriers, &c. all developed from the accompanying rock-dove. In a 

 third the apparently endless sexual variations of the ruff, no two being 

 alike. Illustrations of albinism, such as white sparrows, crows and black- 

 birds and of the white winter dress of the mountain hare and the 

 ptarmigan, and of melanism made even the most casual visitor ponder 

 over the information placed before him in the carefully prepared labels. 

 In like manner the brown hue of sand-frequenting mammals and 



* This was the compliment Professor Virchow, of Berlin, paid him, when one 

 who was accompanying him round the Museum of the College of Surgeons, ex- 

 pressed surprise at the perfect arrangements of the collection : ' ' Why should you 

 be surprised," said Virchow, "when the Museum is under charge of the Prince of 

 Museum Directors, Professor Flower?" 





