-Sir William Flower. 89 



fortunately a severe attack of pleurisy supervened after reaching 

 London, and he gradually lost strength and peacefully passed away on 

 July 1, in his 68th year. 



Tall, fair-haired, and blue-eyed, he bad a handsome form as well as a 

 commanding presence, and these nacural gifts were combined with a 

 ready and earnest address, so that his appearance on public platforms, 

 such as those of the British Association and the Royal Institution, 

 was always welcome and always popular. In private life he was 

 beloved by his family (which next to the Museum was his chief 

 delight) and esteemed by his wide circle of friends, amongst whom the 

 Stanleys and Huxleys were conspicuous. He was an ideal Christian 

 character guided by high principles and indifferent to mere superficial 

 views and impressions, as his clergyman (Rev. Gerald Blunt) briefly 

 wrote. 



He was, besides, genial and considerate to all with whom he came in 

 contact, so that no one could better have filled the important positions 

 he successively occupied. Taken all in all, we shall not soon see so 

 talented and so accurate a comparative anatomist, so impressive a 

 speaker, so facile an artist, or a public man with a higher type of 

 character. As was said by Professor Osborne of Professor Bairn and 

 Dr. Brown Goode, he "entered into the larger conception of the wide 

 reaching responsibilities of his position under the Government, fully 

 realising that he was not at the head of a university or of a metro- 

 politan museum, but of the museum of a great nation." 



W. C. M. 



