VIII 



INTKODUCTOKY LECTUKE TO THE COUESE OF 

 COMPAEATIVE ANATOMY 1 



MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN I am sure that the feeling 

 that is uppermost in the minds of all here assembled is regret 

 at the cause which has placed me before you on this occasion. 

 Of the able and distinguished men who have filled this chair 

 since it was instituted in the commencement of the century, 

 not one was more able or more distinguished than its last 

 occupant, either as an original investigator in the branch of 

 science he adorns or as a facile expositor of its truths. The 

 loss of Professor Huxley's services to this Institution is indeed 

 to be deplored. The only consolation is that what is loss to 

 us may be gain to others. He but leaves us that he may 

 concentrate his time, his energies, his genius, elsewhere. 



Feeling as deeply as I do the responsibilities of the 

 Hunterian professorship, and my incapacity to discharge 

 its duties in a manner worthy of its dignity and importance, 

 I should certainly nave declined to undertake it when it was 

 proposed to me, if it had not been for the thought that these 

 lectures are emphatically museum lectures, intended to illustrate 

 and explain the treasures of our noble collection, and that from 

 these has been derived almost all I know of the great subject 

 that I am now called upon to teach. I shall, therefore, perhaps 

 more than another might, speak to you directly from those 

 specimens. I am, as it were, their mouthpiece. Having 

 lovingly dwelt and worked among them so long, I felt that 

 I could hardly refuse to tell you something of what they are 

 always telling me to endeavour to put their silent eloquence 



1 Delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, 14th February 1870. 



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