ioo COMPARATIVE ANATOMY vin 



use that he had made of them in composing the lectures which 

 he delivered from this chair, though often previously surmised, 

 has become but too obvious since the publication of this 

 work. 1 



Happily, Hunter's devoted assistant and friend, the 

 assiduous and excellent custodian of his collection for nearly 



1 An account of this transaction, with some important remarks upon it by 

 Mr. Clift, is appended to Professor Owen's edition of Hunter's Essays and 

 Observations, referred to above. The late Sir Benjamin C. Brodie in his auto- 

 biography, prefixed to Mr. Charles Hawkins' edition of his works (1865, vol. i. 

 p. 102), speaks of it in the following words: "Some years before his [Sir 

 Everard Home's] death, he got great discredit from having destroyed a 

 considerable portion of John Hunter's manuscripts which had come into his 

 possession as one of Hunter's executors. This act was equally unjustifiable 

 and foolish. It was unjustifiable because the manuscripts should have been 

 considered as belonging to the museum, which Parliament had purchased ; and 

 it was foolish, because it has led to the notion that he had made use of John 

 Hunter's observations for his own purposes much more than was really the case. 

 I had frequent opportunities of seeing these papers during nine or ten years, in 

 which I was accustomed, more or less, conjointly with Mr. Clift, to assist him 

 in his dissections. They consisted of rough notes on the anatomy of animals, 

 which must have been useful to Hunter himself, or which would, I doubt not, 

 have afforded help to Mr. Owen in completing the catalogue of the museum ; 

 but they were not such as could be used with much advantage by another person. 

 In pursuing his own investigations, Home sometimes referred to these ; but I 

 must say that, while I was connected with him, I never knew an instance in 

 which he did not scrupulously acknowledge whatever he took from them, or do 

 justice to his illustrious predecessor. Unhappily, he was led afterwards to deviate 

 from this right course ; and in his later publications I recognise some things 

 which he has given as the result of his own observation, though they were really 

 taken from Hunter's notes and drawings. One of these is a paper on the 

 progressive motion of animals, and another a series of engravings, representing 

 the convolutions of the intestinal canal, and neither of them of much scientific 

 value." See also a note on the same subject in the obituary notice of Sir B. 

 Brodie in the Lancet, 25th October 1862. 



It is very possible that the extent to which Home made use of these manu- 

 scripts had been much exaggerated ; but Brodie certainly did not fully 

 appreciate either their value or the amount of Home's plagiarism. It is not in 

 his latest writings, but in the first volume of his lectures on Comparative 

 Anatomy, published in 1814, that these chiefly occur, as will be seen by the 

 editorial notes appended by Professor Owen to Hunter's Essays. The only 

 justification which can be set up for Home is, that the observations quoted 

 without acknowledgment were really made by him when acting as Hunter's 

 pupil or assistant, and had become incorporated in the papers of his master ; 

 but nothing of the kind appears ever to have been alleged, and this, of course, 

 would be no excuse for first retaining possession of, and subsequently destroying 

 nearly the whole of the manuscripts. 



