Feb. 17, 1887] 



NA TURE 



379 



producing tract yet dUcovere I. A- to gold an i silver, nothing 

 irastworlhy is known. Jade and amber arc found in pirts. 

 Hut the most valuable of the Upper B.irmah minerals is likely 

 to be coal, of which tliere are certainly four fields, one of which 

 has already yielded excellent fuel. 



Dr. Holl'B, whose murder to the north of the Zambesi 

 is doubtfully announced, may be remembered as the auth ir of 

 " Seven Years in South Africa," published about six years ago. 

 He set out some three years ago to march from the Cape to Cairo, 

 partly for purposes of exploration, and partly to open up markets 

 in Central Africa for Austrian commerce. He does not seem to 

 have made much speed. 



Prof. Miguel Marazt.v has made what seems a curious 

 anthropological discovery in the valley of Rebas (Gerona) at the 

 end of the Eastern Pyrenees. There exists in this district a 

 -onewhat numerous group of people, who are called Nanos 

 {dwarfs) by the other inhabitants, and as a m.itter of fact are not 

 more than four feet in height (fio to I'J5 metres). Their 

 bodies are fairly well built, hands and feet small, shoulders and 

 hips broad, making them appear more robust than they really 

 are. Their features are so peculiar that there is no mistaking 

 them among others. All have red hair ; the face is as broad as 

 long, with high cheek-bones, strongly developed jaws, and flat 

 nose. The eyes are not horizontal but somewhat oblique, like 

 those of Tartars and Chinese. A few straggling weak hairs are 

 found in place of be.ird. The skin is pale and flabby. Men 

 aod women are s') much alike that the sex can only be told from 

 the clothing. Though the mouth is large, the lips do not quite 

 cover the large projecting incisors. The Nanus, who are the 

 butt of the other inhabitants, live en'irely by themselves in 

 Keb.as. They intermarry only among themselves, so that their 

 |>cculiarities continue to be reproduced. Entirely without educa- 

 tion, and without any chance of improving their condition, they 

 lead the life of pariahs. They know their own names, but 

 rarely remember those of their parents, can hardly tell where 

 they live, and have no idea of numbers. 



JOHN HUNTER 



'T'lIE Hunterian Oration was delivered on ilonday afternoon 

 ■"• in the theatre of the Royal College of Surgeons by the 

 President, Mr. Savory, F. R.S., Senior Surgeon to .St. Bartholo- 

 mew's Hospital. After a few introductory remarks, Mr. Savory 

 liroceeded to say that surgeons with one voice have proclaimed 

 the supremacy of Hunter .above all who have ever studied surgery. 

 Students of science have acknowledged him to be among the 

 chief of those who have in any age advanced human knowledge. 

 He was, and is, beyond and above all surgeons, a philosopher in 

 surger)-. His idea of the subject of his thoughts was far more 

 adequate than that of other men. He was supreme in the scope 

 and method of his work. He understood much better than those 

 around him how to eng.age in the interpretation of Nature ; he 

 knew best how to approach and to disclose truth. For he not 

 only understood that the problems which lay immediately before 

 him were, of all, the most complex and difficult to solve, but he 

 could see also that they were not isolated but dependent ones. 

 He saw in the necessary relation in which they stood to others 

 the only means by which they could be worked out ; and on 

 this understanding he resolved to investigate the questions 

 he desired to answer. Mr. Savory next spoke of the 

 passion of Hunter for collecting. His museum included, 

 he .said, not only — to use the words of Professor Flower — 

 " illustrations of life in all its aspects, in health and in disease ; 

 specimens of botany, zoology, paloeonfologj', anatomy, physio- 

 logy, and ever)' branch of pathology ; preparations made accord- 

 ing to all the methods then known ; stuffed birds, mam-n.als, and 

 reptiles, fossils, dried shells, corals, insects, and plants ; bones 

 and articu'ated skeletons ; injected dried and varnished vascular 

 preparations; dried preparation: of hollow viscera, mecurial 

 injections, dried and in spirit ; vermilion injections ; dissected 

 preparations in spirit of both vegetable and animal structures, 

 natural and morbid ; undissected animals in spirit, showing ex- 

 tern,al form or awaiting leisure for etamination ; calculi and 

 various animal concretions ; even a collection of microscopic 

 objects, prepared by one of the earliest English histologists, W. 

 Hewson ; but it extended to minerals, coins, pictures, ancient 

 co.at3 of mail, weapons of various dates and nations, and other 

 so-called ' articles of virtu.'" Hunter's l.ibours in surgery were 

 next referred to. He was ever searching for principles, but 



strove to reach them only through facts. Facts always first, 

 but never facts only ; from facts to principles. He understood 

 that all progress mainly depends on the power of grouping and 

 uniting for soroe new purpose facts that have been discovered 

 independently and that are daily being revealed, yet with little 

 or no reference to the principles they are found to support. 

 He saw that surgery, in his time, was but a rude, empirical 

 art, consisting of little else than a knowledge of many facts 

 which stood in no visible relation to each other, and of many 

 more opinions which, for the most part, had no relation, or 

 but a very distant one, to any facts whatever. He lield that 

 surgery should be raised from a collection of such creeds to the 

 rank of a science, but this could be only by founding its practice 

 up tXi some principles. The discovery of some, at least, of these 

 principles was Hunter's final aim. But those principles could 

 not be reached by guessing. They could be approached only 

 through the orderly investigation of facts. But then an explana- 

 tion of these facts themselves could be only through the truths of 

 physiology. The signs of disease could be understood only by 

 him who had studied the laws of life and health. An intelligent 

 interpretation of the one could be only in proportion to a previous 

 knowledge of the other. But the problems of life, of health, 

 are presented to us in man in their most complex form —in a 

 form so difficult that even Hunter could not solve it. They must 

 be reduced to simpler terms through a study of the lower forms 

 of life. Thus, with the ultimate aim of relieving human suffer- 

 ing, Hunter studied the phenomena of motion in plants. Nay, 

 he went further, to crystals and other forms of inorganic matter ; 

 and he says; "The better to understand animal matter, it is 

 necessary to understand the properties of comni jn matter, in 

 order to see how far these properties are introduced into the 

 vegetable and animal operations." The singleness of purpose 

 with which Hunter worked is made evident, Mr. Savory 

 continued, not only in the actual result of his labours, for 

 no hu.jian being with divided interests could rival such 

 achievements, but in the record, as we have it, of the life 

 he led. He gave not only the whole of his time — yes, the 

 whole of it in no mere conventional sense — and all his great 

 powers, his mind and body alike, to the one object of his life ; 

 but to this he sacrificed all that he possessed, all that he could 

 gain. To this he devoted, without stint or scruple, his money, 

 his friendships, all his other interests. What any other man 

 would have considered impossible, he made practicable. And 

 this to no personal end. He was careless of all rewards save 

 that which was to him paraaiount, the discovery of truth. A 

 noteworthy point in the character of Hunter appears to be f jund 

 in thi relation which, in him, thought bore to action. He com- 

 bined in himself in a singular degree the power of conception 

 and of execution. He not only saw much further, but he was 

 able to do much more than most others. He saw as Bacon saw 

 — and the idea was probably as original with him as with Bacon 

 —that the systematic and thorough examination of facts was the 

 first thing to be done in science, "and that, till this had been 

 done faithfully and impartially, with all the appliances and all 

 the safeguards that experience and forethought could suggest, 

 all generalisations, all anticipations from mere reasoning, must 

 be adjourned and postponed ; and further, that, sought on these 

 conditions, knowledge, certain and fruitful, beyond all that man 

 then imagined, could be obtained." But he went immeasurably 

 further than the great prophet of .science in putting his con- 

 ceptions to the proof in imperishable wjrk on the lines he 

 had laid down. " I only sound the clarion," said Bacon, 

 proudly, " but I enter not into the battle." Hunter sounded 

 a clarion the echoes of which are reverberating still, but 

 he entered into the battle also, and was a'ways found where 

 the blows fell thickest, and we are in posses-ion of the 

 spoils. In his museum there is, at once, the clearest evi- 

 dence of the idea and the richest fruits of execution. In speak- 

 ing of Hunter's general education, Mr. Savory proceeded to say 

 that if Hunter had received a good general education in early 

 years he would have been all the better for it. He would have 

 lost nothing. His mental powers could have lieen in ni way 

 impaired ; on the contrary, enhanced. He would have recorded 

 the results of his labours in better order, with more light and 

 greater effect, and we should have had the advantage of a 

 clearer revelation of his thoughts. But all this is very far from 

 saying that Hunter was not, in the strictest sense, an educated 

 man. He was not, indeed, a scholar. If th; subtle rendering 

 of a Greek poet, or the s'iilful turning of a Latin verse be the 

 sole test cf culture, he gave no sign of it. Of ancient lore he 

 was sadly destitute. In Lilcris Huinanioribus he could have 



