FIRST GENERAL MEETING. 5 I 



present occasion that I should recall his name. At that period 

 which is commonly designated the Revival of Learning there 

 flourished, as all present know, a not inconsiderable number of 

 writers on Zoological subjects. There were the ichthyologists 

 Rondelet of Montpellier and Salviani of Rome, whose works appeared 

 in 1554. There were Belon of Le Mans and the great Conrad Gesner 

 of Zurich, whose works appeared the following year. A few years 

 later came Aldrovandi of Bologna, who might indeed be called a 

 compiler, but his was a w^onderful compilation. But just ten years 

 before the earliest publication of any of these men, namely in I544» 

 there was printed at Cologne the little book I have in my hand, 

 and this I believe to be the first work that appeared on Zoology 

 conceived in anything like the spirit that moves modern naturalists. 

 Its author was William Turner — we have one of that name now in 

 Great Britain, and I wish he were present to hear my remarks on 

 his homonym. Now this William Turner entered this University 

 in 1529 or 30, graduating in 1533 and becoming a Fellow of Pem- 

 broke Hall. I am not going to trouble you with the events of his 

 chequered life. It may interest you, Mr President, to know that 

 he was also a botanist, and once sat in the House of Commons, 

 while, having practised as a Physician, he died in 1568 a Dean, 

 and is buried in St Olave's, Hart Street, London. Turner, as I 

 said, brought out this little book in 1 544 at Cologne, where he was 

 living because (though it is dedicated to the then Prince of Wales, 

 who afterwards became King Edward VI) it was pleasanter for him 

 to be out of this country at the time. It is gratifying to me not 

 only that he was a Cambridge man, but that he was also an Orni- 

 thologist, and it seems to me that he was a man of common sense, 

 for he began his subject at the beginning, and wrote a brief and 

 succinct history of the chief birds mentioned by Aristotle and Pliny, 

 adding to it notes from his own experience which shew him to have 

 been a good original observer, and by no means a mere repeater or 

 compiler of other men's words. He travelled much and had a 

 personal acquaintance with Gesner and Aldrovandi — each of whom 

 acknowledges his indebtedness to Turner. I think I may claim 

 him as the first to write and publish a zoological work since the 

 Revival of Learning. I have no wish to dwell unduly on our 

 worthies — but in 1570, only two years after Turner's death, Caius 

 brought out in London and dedicated to Gesner his treatise on the 

 History of the Rarer Animals. Now all this I mention not for the 

 glory of Cambridge, but because it shews intercourse with other 

 nations — we Britons were not so completely cut off from the rest 

 of the civilised world as is often thought, and an International 

 Congress of Zoologists would have been quite possible then. 



On the motion of the Secretary, the following gentlemen were 

 unanimously elected Vice-Presidents : 



Prof. Milne-Edwards, Dr Jentink, Prof R. Collett, Prof Haeckel, 



4—2 



