356 Miscellaneous. 



students of all Germany; nor did this attraction cease during a 

 brilliant career of more than fifty years. In 1784, his celebrated 

 lecture on the eyes of the White Negro* awakened an intense in- 

 terest throughout the scientific world, and, together with his Inau- 

 gural Essay upon the native varieties of the human race, became the 

 nucleus of his future works on the Natural History of Man. 



In 1790 appeared the first Decad of his collection of skulls of dif- 

 ferent nations, a subject which continued among the most favourite 

 themes of his study, from its first commencement in his Inaugural 

 Dissertation, to his last essay upon a Macrocephalus in 1 833. 



On the celebration of the Jubilee of his Doctoriat, Sept. 19tli, 

 1825, the company of the most distinguished naturalists and medi- 

 cal practitioners of Germany then assembled at Gottingen resolved, 

 on the suggestion of Rudolphi, to testify their gratitude for the be- 

 nefits they had individually received from his oral instructions and 

 published works, and to perpetuate the memory of this remarkable 

 assembly, by the foundation of a travelling Fellowship in honour of 

 Blumenbach, and by a medalf, bearing on its obverse three skulls 

 of the European, Ethiopic and Mongolian races. 



The expressions of piety, gratitude, and afl^ection which are re- 

 corded in the elder Sommering's celebrated Inaugural Dissertation 

 give utterance to feelings, in which the pupils collected around him 

 during more than half a centuiy have, without exception, partici- 

 pated. 



He was the great precursor of Cuvier in comparative anatomy, 

 and was the first to demonstrate the value of this science in its re- 

 lation to pathology, and to convince mankind of the truth of the 

 observation of Haller — that physiology has been more illustrated 

 by comparative anatomy than by the dissection of the human body, 

 so that henceforth this subject must become an essential pai't of 

 medical education. 



The present is not the fit occasion to enter into a discussion of 

 the unrivalled merits of his lectures on pathology, comparative 

 anatomy, natural history, and physiology ; nor to set forth the 

 number and nature of his multiiarious publications on these sub- 

 jects, and also on archaeology, literature, and the fine arts, which, 

 during a period of sixty years, enriched the Commentaries of the 

 Royal Society of Gottingen, and the medical, literary and philo- 

 sophical periodicals of Germany ; nor does the time permit me to 

 enter on an analysis of his lucid and instructive Manuals, which 

 were soon translated into foreign languages, and became the text- 

 book of teachers of comparative anatomy and physiology through- 

 out Europe ; I shall rather call your attention to his acute percep- 

 tion of the value of organic remains in relation to geology, as 

 affording evidence of past changes and revolutions which have af- 

 fected the surface of the globe. 



* De oculis Leucaethiopum et iridis motu. Soc. R. Gott., v. vii. p. 29 — 

 62. 



t With the following inscription, " NattircB Interpreti, Ossa Loqui Ju- 

 beuti, Physiophili Germanici, 19 Sept. 1825." 



