AT WELLINGTON COLLEGE 159 



work. In June 1885 he distributed prizes in 

 Birmingham Town Hall to the school children for 

 kindness to animals. In October he lectured on 

 ** Varieties of Man" in the Free Library at Bethnal 

 Green, and in November at Wellington College to 

 the boys on ** Birds which cannot fly." His second 

 boy, now Captain Stanley Flower, Director of the 

 Zoological Gardens at Gezireh, was at school there, 

 and his youngest, Victor, was at a preparatory 

 school near, and able to meet his father and mother 

 at the station, while both were in the audience with 

 their mother. The Wellington boys greatly ap- 

 proved of the lecture, and were good enough to 

 extend their complimentary cheers not only to 

 Flower, but to those of his family in the audience. 

 By a curious prophecy, Dr. Wickham, the then 

 headmaster, said half in joke that the elder boy, 

 who had already won the Pender Prize for the best 

 essay on Natural History, would perhaps succeed 

 his father. As head of the Egyptian Zoological 

 Gardens and Director of the Wild Animal Depart- 

 ment of the Soudan, he in a measure fulfilled 

 this prediction. 



In the winter of 1885 Flower lectured at the 

 London Institution on '' Horses of the Past and 

 Present." The history of the horse was one of the 

 Mammalia of which he made a special study, and in 

 which, by his lectures and writings, he steadily 

 interested the public. He traced the descent of 

 the modern horse, which he held to be the most 



