XXXII LIFE OF DR. R0LLEST0N. 



Natural Science on a par with the old learning. In i860 the 

 central hall and galleries were opened for the collections which 

 were to provide materials of instruction, and the lecture-rooms 

 for the professors who were to convert these materials into 

 scientific education. Christ Chureh removed its Anatomical 

 Collection to the University Museum, and the Lee's Reader in 

 Anatomy migrated with it. Dr. Acland induced the Radcliffe 

 Trustees to move the Radeliffe Library thither also, that the 

 Museum might have the best provision of scientific books, 

 while at the same time the Camera, where the Radcliffe 

 Library had been housed, was set free for the more general 

 purposes of a reading-room and annex of the Bodleian. Merton 

 College, having a large fund available for the promotion of 

 Medicine, took the judicious course of creating the Linacre 

 Professorship of Anatomy and Physiology, also within the walls 

 of the Museum. When this Chair was founded in i860, Dr. 

 Rolleston was elected its first oeeupant, and held it through 

 life. It was a stirring time in the history of Biology when he 

 began his work. Darwin's 'Origin of Species' had set men's 

 mind in movement, though whither this would tend was not yet 

 seen by all. It was destined not indeed to carry Rolleston's 

 mind altogether in its stream, but to shift the direction and 

 force of the current of his thought. A letter to his friend on 

 Jan. 19, i860, shows him swaying under its first impulse: 

 'I don't see that you mention Darwin's book; everybody is 

 reading it now and here, and I think if the book were a little 

 better arranged it would make a good many converts. If the 

 chapter on Classification, which is now last but one in the book, 

 were put first, the book would be much more read. As it is, 

 many people are deterred from reading it by the great difficulty 

 of mastering his meaning, as he writes as curtly as Bishop 

 Butler nearly. I am very much amused to find the Hyper- 

 orthodox Americans of the North are driven into unison with 

 the Southern Slaveholders in one point by their fear of Lamarck 

 and the ' Vestiges of Creation.' They have out of utter fear of 

 these views gone into the other extreme of multiplying specific 



