298 



NA TURE 



[July 24, 1890 



wards with W, B'. Carpenter and H. B. Brady, Mr. 

 Parker, down to 1873, described and illustrated many 

 groups and species of Foraminifera, recent and fossil 

 (see C. D. Sherborn's " Bibliography of Foraminifera '' 

 for these papers and memoirs), thereby establishing more 

 accurately a natural classification of these microzoa, 

 determining their bathymetrical conditions, and therefore 

 their value in geology. That he did not neglect ana- 

 tomical research is shown by memoirs in the Proceedings 

 and Transactions of the Zoological Society on the 

 osteology (chiefly cranial) and systematic position of 

 Bakeniceps (1860), Pterocles (1862), Palamedea (1863), 

 Gallinaceous Birds and Tinamous (1862 and 1866), 

 Kagu (1864 and 1869), Ostriches (1864), Microglossa 

 (1865), Common Fowl (1869), Eel (Nature, 1871), 

 skull of Frog (1871), of Crow (1872), Salmon, Tit, 

 Sparrow-hawk, Thrushes, Sturgeon, and Pig (1873). 

 In the meantime the Ray Society had brought out his 

 valuable " Monograph on the structure and development 

 of the Shoulder-girdle and Sternum in the Vertebrata" 

 (1868) ; and his Presidential addresses to the Royal Micro- 

 scopical Society (1872, 1873), and notes on the Archgeo- 

 pteryx (1864), and the fossil Bird bones from the Zebbug 

 Cave, Malta (1865 and 1869), had been published. 

 Subsequently the Royal Society's Transactions contained 

 his abundantly illustrated memoirs on the skull of the 

 Batrachia (1878 and 1880), of the Urodelous Amphibia 

 (1877), the Common Snake (1878), Sturgeon (1882), 

 Lepidosteus (1882), Edentata (1886), Insectivora (1886), 

 and his elaborate memoir on the development of the 

 wing of the Common Fowl (1888). In the " Reports of 

 the Challenger" is his memoir on the Green Turtle (1880) ; 

 and those on Tarsipes (Dundee, 1889), and the Duck and 

 the Auk (Dublin, 1890), are his last works. 



In former times a skull was taken as little more than 

 a dry, symmetrical, bony structure ; or, if it were the 

 cartilaginous brain-case of a shark, it was to most a mere 

 dried museum specimen. When, however, the gradations 

 of the elements of the skull, from embryonic beginnings, 

 were traced until their mutual relations and their homo- 

 logues in other Vertebrates were established, light was 

 thrown on the wonderful completeness of organic uni- 

 formity and singleness of design. How such studies can 

 be carried on both by minute dissection and the modern 

 art of parallel slicing, and not by one method alone, is to 

 be gathered from his teaching. 



Mr. Parker was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 

 1865, and in the year following he received a Royal Medal 

 for his comprehensive, exact, and useful researches in the 

 developmental osteology, or embryonal morphology, of 

 Vertebrates. Some few years afterwards the Royal 

 Society gave him an annual grant to aid in the prosecu- 

 tion of his studies ; and, when that was discontinued, a 

 pension from the Crown was graciously and appropriately 

 awarded to him. A generous friend, belonging to a well- 

 known Wesleyan family, more than once presented ^100 

 towards the cost of some of the numerous plates illustrat- 

 ing his grand memoirs in the Philosophical Transactions. 



In 1873 he received the diploma as Member of the 

 Royal College of Surgeons, and was appointed Hunterian 

 Professor, Prof. Flower being invahded for a time ; and 

 afterwards both held the Professorship conjointly. His 

 earnestness and wide views were well appreciated, open- 

 ing up the modern aspect of comparative anatomy, and 

 showing that both in Man and the lower Vertebrates the 

 wonderful structural development of their bony framework 

 should be studied in a strictly morphological rather than 

 a teleological method, and that its stages and resultant 

 forms could be regarded only in the Darwinian aspect. 



These lectures, j_;iven in abstract in the medical jour- 

 nals, became the basis of his " Morphology of the Skull," 

 in writing which, from his dictation and notes, Mr. G. T. 

 Bettany kindly assisted him ; and again, in a semi-popular 

 book, "On Mammalian Descent," another friend (Miss 



NO. 1082, VOL. 42] 



Arabella Buckley, now Mrs. Fisher) similarly helped him. 

 In the latter work, his own usual style frequently pre- 

 dominates, full of metaphor and quaint allusions, origin- 

 ating in his imaginative and indeed poetic mind, fully 

 impregnated with ideas and expressions frequent in his 

 favourite and much-read books— Shakespeare, Bacon, 

 Milton, some of the old divines, and, above all, the old 

 English Bible. 



Separating himself from the trammels of foregone con- 

 clusions, and from the formulated, but imperfect, mislead- 

 ing conceptions of some of his predecessors in Biology, 

 whom he left for the teaching of Rathke, Gegenbaur, and 

 Huxley, Prof W. K. Parker earnestly inculcated the 

 necessity of single-sighted research, and the following up 

 of any unbiassed elucidations, to whatever natural con- 

 clusion they may lead. Simple and firm in Christian 

 faith, resolute in scientific research, he felt free from 

 dread of any real collision between science and religion. 

 He insisted that " our proper work is not that of strain- 

 ing our too feeble faculties at system-building, but humble 

 and patient attention to what Nature herself teaches, 

 comparing actual things with actual" (Proc. Zool. Soc, 

 1864) ; and in his " Shoulder-girdle, &c.," p. 2, he writes : 

 " Then, in the times to come, when we have ' prepared our 

 work without, and made it fit for ourselves in the fie'd,' 

 we shall be able to build a ' system of anatomy' which 

 shall truly represent Nature, and not be a mere reflection 

 of the mind of one of her talented observers." 



Again, at p. 225, in illustration of some results of his 

 work, he says : — " The first instance I have given of the 

 Shoulder-girdle (in the Skate) may be compared to a 

 clay model in its first stage, or to the heavy oaken 

 furniture of our forefathers, that 'stood pond'rous and 

 fixed by its own massy weight' As we ascend the 

 vertebrate scale, the mass becomes more elegant, more 

 subdivided, and more metamorphosed, until, in the Bird 

 Class and among the Mammals, these parts form the 

 framework of limbs than which nothing can be imagined 

 more agile or more apt. So also, as it regards the 

 Sternum ; at first a mere outcropping of the feebly 

 developed costal arches in the Amphibia, it becomes the 

 keystone of perfect arches in the true Reptile ; then the 

 fulcrum of the exquisitely constructed organs of flight in 

 the Bird ; and, lastly, forms the mobile front-wall of the 

 heaving chest of the highest Vertebrate." 



Prof. W. K. Parker was a Fellow of the Royal, Linnean, 

 Zoological, and Royal Microscopical Societies ; Honorary 

 Member of King's College, London, the Philosophical 

 Society of Cambridge, and the Medical Chirurgical 

 Society. He was also a Member of the Imperial Society of 

 Naturalists of Moscow, and Corresponding Member of 

 the Imperial Geological Institute of Vienna, and the 

 Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. In 1885 

 he received from the Royal College of Physicians the 

 Bayly Medal, "Ob physiologiam feliciter excultam." 



In conversations shortly before his death, he often 

 spoke of looking forward throughout his hfe-time (alas ! 

 how quickly shortened !) to continued appUcation of all 

 the energy he could devote to his useful work— at once a 

 consolation to him and a duty. 



He has well expressed his own view of biological 

 pursuits, at p. 363 of the " Morphology of the Skull " :— 

 " The study of animal morphology leads to continually 

 grander and more reverend views of creation and of a 

 Creator. Each fresh advance shows us further fields for 

 conquest, and at the same time deepens the conviction 

 that, while results and secondary operations may be 

 discovered by human intelligence, ' no man can find out 

 the work that God maketh from the beginning to the 

 end.' We live as in a twilight of knowledge, charged 

 with revelations of order and beauty ; we steadfastly 

 look for a perfect light, which shall reveal perfect order 

 and beauty." 



An unworldly seeker after truth, and loved by all who 



