358 GEORGE ROLLESTON xxi 



member of the Council of the University, and its representative 

 in the General Medical Council, and also an active member of 

 the Oxford Local Board. 



In 1861 he married Grace, daughter of Dr. John Davy, 

 F.K.S., and niece of Sir Humphrey Davy, and he leaves a 

 family of seven children. 



The duties of the Linacre professorship involved the teach- 

 ing of a wide range of subjects included under the terms of 

 physiology and anatomy, human and comparative, to which 

 he added the hitherto neglected but important subject of 

 anthropology, as well as the care of a great and ever-growing 

 museum. In the present condition of scientific knowledge it 

 requires a man of very versatile intellect and extensive powers 

 of reading to maintain anything like an adequate acquaintance 

 with the current literature of any one of these subjects, much 

 more to undertake original observations on his own account. 

 Even a man of Kolleston's powers felt the impossibility of any 

 one person doing justice to the chair as thus constituted, and 

 strongly urged the necessity of dividing it into three professor- 

 ships, one of physiology, one of comparative anatomy, and one 

 of human anatomy and anthropology. The work which he 

 did, however, contrive to find time to publish, and by which 

 he will be chiefly known to posterity, is remarkable for its 

 thoroughness. He never committed himself to writing with- 

 out having completely mastered everything that had been 

 previously written upon the subject, and his memoirs bristle 

 with quotations from, and references to, authors of all ages 

 and all nations. The abundance with which these were 

 supplied by his wonderful memory, and the readiness with 

 which, both in speaking and writing, his thoughts clothed 

 themselves with appropriate words, sometimes made it difficult 

 for ordinary minds to follow the train of his argument through 

 long and voluminous sentences, often made up of parenthesis 

 within parenthesis. 



The work which was most especially the outcome of his 

 professorial duties is the Forms of Animal Life, published at 

 the Clarendon Press in 1870. Though written chiefly with 

 a view to the needs of the University students, it is capable 

 of application to more general purposes, and is one of the 



