MEMOIR OF CAMPER. 25 



of the Athenaeum, was the first volume of his De- 

 monstrationes Anatomico-Pathologicce ; but the lei- 

 sure he now enjoyed in his retirement, allowed him 

 to devote much more of his time to science, and en- 

 abled him, through the press, to supply to the public 

 some of those stores of information he had been so 

 long accumulating. Accordingly, the second vo- 

 lume of the work above named, and which, we may 

 remark, was most highly esteemed, for the execution 

 both of the pen and the pencil, made its appearance 

 in 1762. He also published, in the Dutch lan- 

 guage, an interesting memoir on an important sur- 

 gical disease frequently occurring in new-bom in- 

 fants, another upon The Physical Education of In- 

 -(ants, and a third, An Anatomical Description of 

 the Organ of Hearing in Fishes. 



Camper's son claims the entire merit of this dis- 

 covery in the anatomy of fishes for his father ; but 

 some of our readers will be aware, that of the many 

 discoveries in natural history, the priority and ho- 

 nour of which have been disputed by contending 

 claimants, this is one of the most remarkable. Zoo- 

 logists in Germany and Italy, as well as in France, 

 Holland, and England, have asserted their respective 

 pretensions, among whom we shall only name M. 

 Geoffroy and the celebrated John Hunter. This is 

 not the place to enter into the examination of such 

 a controversy ; and we shall only therefore remark, 

 that, unless Mr Hunter can be supposed capable o 

 deliberate falsehood, his claim to priority of disco- 



