XXX LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. 



of growth had begun. The extensive series of dissections made 

 under Dr. A eland, out of which grew the present collections of 

 Comparative Anatomy in the University Museum, had laid the 

 foundations of its Biological department, and when his Reader- 

 ship passed on to Dr. Rolleston, the almost extinct teaching had 

 become a reality in the University. Rolleston carried on the 

 work between two and three years, and a proof of his success in 

 carrying his class with him may be found in the remark of Pro- 

 fessor Bartholomew Price, that although the Pembroke students 

 were now no longer bound to attend Professors' lectures, the 

 number of the Lee's Reader's auditors increased instead of falling 

 off. Rolleston began by the usual medical combination of private 

 practice with teaching, and he seems to have been popular 

 as a physician, but as time went on he came more and more 

 to see that his work had to be done in the world rather as 

 an instructor than as a practitioner. A letter he wrote to his 

 sister on Dec. 24, 1859 (he was then living at No. 5, Broad 

 Street, Oxford) is a good example of his manner, while its end- 

 ing shows how his mind was settling on to its permanent lines. 

 'I have at this moment in my care a girl of 14, who has 

 had a very bad fever with relapses . . . but is very likely to get 

 sound and well. The people of this part of the world have very 

 low wages in the country villages, and are in consequence as 

 brutish as can be imagined. This child is half Pig and half 

 Tiger-cat. The other day I was poking a stick of caustic into 

 her throat to stop an uvula cough, when, as I withdrew the 

 holder, she snapped at it like a dog snapping at a whip. She 

 gripped the holder, set the caustic-stick free, and down her 

 throat it went. By Jove, j^ou should have seen her face as the 

 burning stick went down. There was not a moment to be lost, 

 and I got a salt-cellar full of salt and poured it down her throat 

 to neutralise the nitrate of silver. As the salt got down the 

 pain left her face, but I was in an awful fright. So was she, 

 but the Tiger-cat soon awoke again as the pain ceased for the 

 moment. But there was a good lot of nitrate of silver I knew 

 as yet unneutralised, and getting a wooden peg I poured salt 



