NATURE 



97 



THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 1904. 



SIR WILLIAM FLOWER. 

 Sir William Henry Flower, K.C.B., <S-c.; a Personal 

 Memoir. By C. J. Cornish. Pp. xi + 274; illus- 

 trated. (London : Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1904.) 

 Price 8s. 6d. net. 

 'T'^'H.^T the life of a man of the social and scientific 

 -I- position of the late director of the natural 

 history branch of the British Museum should be 

 written, and written, moreover, by a master of popular 

 literature, will, we think, be admitted on all hands, 

 and in tendering a hearty welcome to this record of 

 a distinguished career and a fine character, we trust 

 we shall be expressing the views of no inconsiderable 

 section of the public, and of all our readers. Mr. 

 Cornish, whose name needs no introduction of ours to 

 the reading public, has been fortunate in securing the 

 cooperation of several members of the late Sir 

 William's family in the compilation of the memoir 

 before us, so that all the details with regard to early 

 life and family history may be accepted as thoroughly 

 authentic. The first two chapters, dealing with the 

 period ending with the return from the Crimea, are, 

 indeed, written by Mr. Victor Flower, Sir William's 

 youngest son, while the final chapter of the biography, 

 describing the closing scenes, is from the pen of his 

 widow. Lady Flower. Nor is this by any means all 

 in the way of contributions by members of the family 

 to the biography, for the eldest daughter of Sir 

 William, Mrs. Shann, takes the public into her. con- 

 fidence with regard to family life in the well known 

 house adjacent to the Museum of the Royal College 

 of Surgeons, while another daughter, Mrs. Biddulph, 

 communicates a note on the summer holidays of the 

 Flower family in early days. No critic can therefore 

 complain of any lack of breadth in the lines upon 

 which the biography has been drawn up ; we have, 

 indeed, not only the life-history of the central figure, 

 but a large amount of Information with regard to the 

 family generally. 



The memoir, as the author says in his preface, is 

 essentially a personal one, and does not in any way 

 claim to give an account of Sir William's scientific 

 work, which must remain for a future biographer. 



Although the biography of a scientific man in which 

 there is no detailed reference to, or criticism of, the 

 work from which he gained his reputation reminds us 

 of the well known saying in regard to the play of 

 " Hamlet," yet, if we may judge from what little he 

 has attempted in this line, Mr. Cornish has been 

 decidedly \\g^ advised in confining himself in the main 

 to the p*9onal aspect of his subject. When, for 

 instance, he strays even such a short distance away 

 from this track as to compile a list of Sir William's 

 scientific papers, he displays a lamentable carelessness 

 and a lack of knowledge of both the principles of 

 bibliography and of zoological nomenclature. The 

 want of accuracy in matters of this nature is indeed 

 displayed even on the title-page of his memoir, where 

 we find Sir William described as president of the Royal 

 Zoological Society. 



NO. 1805, VOL. 70] 



To justify our assertion as to the want of care dis- 

 played in the compilation of the list of scientific papers 

 and books given in one of the appendices,' we need 

 only refer, in the first place, to the following " mis- 

 prints," as we suppose they must be euphemistically 

 termed. On p. 252 we have, for instance, Hylobatus 

 for Hylobates, syndactilis for syndactylus, and javenicus 

 for javanicus. On the following page, and elsewhere, 

 we find Physalius for Physalus, on p. 254 geoffrensis 

 for geoffroyensis, and on p. 256 Hclitherium for Hali- 

 therium and arnuschi for arnuxi. Nor are such errors 

 confined to the appendix, for in the text (which is 

 wholly the author's) we find on p. 121 Etteridge for 

 Etheridge, and on p. 175 Hyperodon for Hyperoodon. 

 In the case of the bibliography, at any rate, such errors 

 (at which no one would have been more annoyed than 

 Flower, who was the very spirit of accuracy in such 

 matters) might have been easily detected by checking 

 the list with the Royal Society's " Catalogue o: 

 Scientific Papers." 



Nor is this all, for we find want of uniformity in 

 regard to the references to the serials in which the 

 papers originally appeared. For instance, we have on 

 p. 2^-j ]ourn. Anth. Inst, and on p. 258 Anthropol. Inst. 

 Journ., while on the latter page we find Zool! Soc. 

 Proc. as the equivalent of Zool. Soc. Proc. London on 

 p. 260. Again, we should much like to know the 

 meaning, so far as the Roman numerals are concerned, 

 of the following entries on the page last mentioned, 

 viz. " Zool. Soc. Proc. London, 1884, cxi. p. 417," and 

 " Zool. Soc. Proc. London, 1SS4, xi. p. 206." 



Reverting to the book itself, we find the fourth and 

 fifth chapters devoted to the period during which 

 Flower was officially connected with the Museum of 

 the Royal College of Surgeons. Here the author re- 

 cords the energetic manner in which Flower set himself 

 to work to render the museum more useful to students, 

 and the inventions he devised for the better display or 

 more convenient handling of the specimens exhibited. 

 Family life during this period forms the subject of 

 chapter vi., while in the following chapter we are 

 introduced to some of Sir William's personal friends, 

 among whom were Dean Stanley, Prof. Huxley, and the 

 late Duke of Argyll. Chapters ix. to xiii. treat of the 

 second portion of Sir William's official career, during 

 which he was head of the museum in the Cromwell 

 Road. Here, in the main, the author records very 

 fairly the changes and improvements introduced 

 gradually and tactfully during Flower's administra- 

 tion, dwelling especially on the installation of the 

 " index museum " and the other contents of the central 

 hall, and also directing attention to the better 

 manner of displaying specimens introduced under the 

 new regime. We fail, however, to understand the 

 meaning of the sentence on p. 140, in which it is 

 recorded that 



" In 1898 the rearrangements of the mammals on 

 Flower's system were nearly completed for the classes 

 Chiroptera (bats), Edentata, and Primates." 



As a matter of fact, the provisional arrangement of 

 all the orders (not classes) had been by that time com- 



1 The list is stated to have been cpmpiled by Mr. Victor Flower, but the 

 author must be held responsible for its inaccuracies. 



F 



