vin JOHN HUNTER AND SIR EVERARD HOME 99 



published works are held, and it is this which was, I suspect, 

 the reason why his published writings bear so small a pro- 

 portion to the vast mass of rough manuscript which he left 

 behind him, especially on the subjects with which we are at 

 present engaged. 



The perusal of the work just mentioned will show how, 

 while occupied with a large and anxious practice in itself 

 labour enough for ordinary men while cultivating with what 

 I might describe as a passionate energy the sciences of physi- 

 ology and pathology, while collecting and arranging a museum 

 such as never has been formed before or since by a single 

 individual, he had also carefully recorded a series of dissections 

 of different species of animals which, as his learned editor 

 justly says, if " published seriatim, would not only have vied 

 with the labours of Daubenton as recorded in the Histoire 

 Naturelle of Buffou, or with the Comparative Dissections of 

 Yicq d'Azyr, which are inserted in the early volumes of the 

 Encyclopedic Mdtliodique and in the Mdmoires de V Academic 

 Eoyale de France, but they would have exceeded them both 

 together." ] In fact they would have established Hunter's fame 

 as by far the greatest contributor to the knowledge of animal 

 structure of his time, and, what is more important, would have 

 aided most materially in the advancement and diffusion of that 

 knowledge. 



The work as now published contains notes of dissections, 

 more or less complete, of no less than 129 species of mammalia, 

 80 species of birds, 20 species of reptiles, 9 of amphibia, and 

 1 9 of fishes, besides numerous in vertebra ted animals of various 

 classes ; and these appear to be by no means the entire series 

 of dissections left by Hunter. 



The fate of the original manuscripts forms a sad page in 

 the history of our science, and, I must also add, in the history 

 of a man whom our Profession, and this College especially, 

 might otherwise have regarded with feelings of respect and 

 gratitude. Exactly thirty years after Hunter's death, his 

 brother-in-law and executor, Sir Everard Home, who had 

 retained possession of them when the collection was trans- 

 ferred to the College, committed them all to the flames. The 



1 Owen in Works of John Hunter, Palmer's edition, vol. iv. p. vi. 



