;8o 



NA TURE 



\^Fcb. 17, 1S87 



had no place. But if a transcendent knowledge of Nature and 

 her ways, if a firm and ample grasp of her noblest truths, be 

 accounted education, if the devotion through a lifetime of 

 gigantic intellectual powers and of a truly loving heart to the 

 reverent study of God's works be culture, then Hunter, though 

 not a man of letters, was surely a highly educated man. The 

 fame of Hunter, after all, falls far short of him. It may, with- 

 out exaggeration, be said that he is really greater than to mosi 

 men, even to most surgeons, he appears to be. It is only after 

 a review of the whole of his vast labours, in their mutual rela- 

 tion, not merely after a study of the merits of his numerous 

 papers, each taken by itself, but in an attempt to appre- 

 hend the scheme to which all his labours were subser- 

 vient, that we are in any measure able to realise the 

 strength of Hunter's genius. Then, as the chief merit 

 of his work is not of a character to catch at once the 

 eye, even of one who searches for it, so his subject is not one of 

 widespread or popular interest. Of all men who have achieved 

 greatness, Hunter requires to be studied with most diligence, 

 the more so because of the absence of all literary skill. And 

 there can be no doubt that he shared the fate of all those who 

 have been, like him, in advance of their time. He was so far 

 beyond his contemporaries as to be, for the most part, out of 

 their reach, and therefore they left him alone ; .and even his 

 successors have not always found him out. It may, indeed, be 

 said to have been almost by an accident that, in association with 

 the possession of his museum, we have periodically a festival in 

 honour of his memory. .Such, then, at least in the eyes of one 

 who, though from afar, has long and earnestly looked up to 

 him, was John Hunter. Beyond all cavil, if the word have any 

 meaning for us, he was a man of genius — a man supremely 

 endowed with power and faculties for the discovery of truth. 

 With little education at the outset of life, without the advantage 

 of the schools, he found himself face to face with the deepest 

 and most mysterious problems of Nature, and he was forthwith 

 able to take full measure of the magnitude of the task. It 

 seems never to have occurred to him that he could snatch an 

 answer by surprise ; that a solution could be reached by any 

 short or sudden means. But his survey assured him that upon 

 one plan only, but by that abundantly, could success be made 

 certain. So with patience, whichof itself has been called genius, 

 he went back to the beginning. It was genius too, and that of 

 the highest order, to discern, at so vast a distance, where the 

 beginning lay. But there he placed himself, and from th.at point 

 went forward only when he had made each footstep sure. Who 

 shall say that his imagination was not fertile, or that he faltered 

 in the use of it ? Yet no seductive theory tempted him into 

 undue h.iste, and though sometimes drawn aside by a specious 

 speculation, he seems hardly ever to have been lost in an unsound 

 conclusion. And when he fell, the treasures he had won were 

 found not only in the multitude of facts he had garnered, or 

 even in the principles which, by virtue of the facts he had dis- 

 covered, were made plain, but also in the very plan and purpose ' 

 of his work. For, from the height on which at length he stood, 1 

 not only can the path he trod be clearly traced, but the highw.ay } 

 thenceforward is disclosed. .So is the greatness of John Hunter 

 to be estimated, not only by what he discovered, but rather by 1 

 the lesson and example of his work. Truly it may be said of | 

 him that he did much. Truly it may be said of him I 

 that he showed how much more there is to be done. " He | 

 being dead yet speaketh," still speaks to us .as no other 

 man before or since has spoken. But when and where can his 

 voice be heard most plainly ? Are the spirits of those who have 

 shaken off "this muddy vesture of decay" permitted to revisit 

 the scenes of their earthly labours ? Can they still be with us 

 on our way ? If the soul of this mighty son of science is ever 

 in our midst, surely his favourite haunt must be now within 

 these walls — in the museum which will soon almost surround us, 

 at once his most graphic and glorious monument. The memory , 

 of Hunter, like the memory of the greatest men of every age, 

 is imperishably enshrined. Art, in her noblest efforts, has 

 striven to make his form f.amiliar to us. His name is 

 stamped in indelible characters on the records of human 

 progress. But, before all, he lives in, and draws the breath 

 of life from, his own immortal works. And of these none 

 can be so truly a memorial of the very man as this ; no other 

 can so resemble him, can possess so much of him, can tell so 

 fully of what he was ; can so perpetuate him in the vast store of 

 facts, in the purpose for which they are set forth, in the illustra- 

 tion of principles, in the suggestion of truths beyond those it 



can show, above those it can reach — in .all this, I say, no 

 memorial, however majestic, can rival our museum. The 

 foundation of this with his own hand and his whole heart he 

 laid ; it has grown, and still is growing, from his strength, and 

 it must be made for ever worthy of his name. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE 



Oxford. — The following new E.^aminers have been .appointed 

 in the Natural Science School : Mr. V. H. Veley (Chemistry), 

 Dr. W. H. Gaskell and Prof. Ray Lankester (Biology), Mr. J. 

 V. Jones (Physics). Mr. W. W. Fisher and the Rev. F. J. 

 Smith are to be Examiners in the Pass Schools. 



The Sibthorpian Professorsliip of Rural Economy is now 

 vacant, and candit.ates for it are requested to send in their appli- 

 cations to the Registrar of the University before March 10. 



The Board of the Faculty of Medicine has issued a list of 

 subjects to be offered in the first examination for the B. M. 

 degree under the new medical statutes. 



Scholarships in Natural Science are announced for competi- 

 tion at Merton, Corpus, and Queen's, and at New College. 



SCIENTIFIC SERIALS 



American youriml of Science, January. — The Muir glacier, 

 by G. Frederick Wright. The paper contains an exhaustive 

 study of this interesting glacier, which lies in the Alpine region 

 of Alaska at the head of Muir Inlet, Glacier Bay, in 58" 50' N. 

 lat., I36°40' W. long. It forms a frozen stream some 5000 feet 

 wide by 700 deep, entering the inlet at a mean rate of 40 feet, 

 or i40,ooo,ocx3 cubic feet, per day, during the month of August. 

 The vertical front at the water's edge is from 250 to 500 feet, and 

 from this front icebergs are continually breaking away, some 

 m.any hundred feet long, with a volume of 40,000,000 cubic feet. 

 The glacier appears to be rapidly retreating, there being indica- 

 tions that even since the beginning of this century it has receded 

 several miles up the inlet, and fallen 1000 or 1500 feet below 

 its former level. — On the age of the coal found in the region 

 traversed by the Rio Grande del Norte, by C. .\. White. The 

 carboniferous beds occurring at various points in this region vary 

 greatly in quality, but none of them appear to be earlier than 

 late Cretaceous age. — The viscosity of steel and its relations to 

 temper (continued), by C. Barus .and V. .Strouhal. Am< ng the 

 chief results of the authors' further experiments, as here de- 

 scribed and tabulated, is the light thrown on the crucial import- 

 ance of the physical changes which steel undergoes during 

 annealing at high temperatures between 500° and 1000' C. Within 

 these limits occur several nearly coincident phenomena : such as 

 (Jore's sudden volume expansion ; Tait's sinuously broken thermo- 

 electric resistance ; Gore-Baur's sudden disappearance of magnetic 

 quality ; the passage of carbon from uncombined to combined ; 

 Jean's critical cementation temperature ; and the authors' own 

 unique maximum of viscosity. — On the nature and origin of 

 lithophysa;, and the lamination of acid lavas, by Joseph P. 

 Iddings. The data upon which the conclusions here stated are 

 based were obtained from a study of the various forms of structure 

 and crystallisation assumed by acid lavas in cooling, as observed 

 while prosecuting the work of the United States Geological 

 Survey in the Yellowstone National Park under Mr. Arnold 

 Hague. The lithophysa;, composed of prismatic quartz, tridymite, 

 soda-orthoclase, fayalite, and magnetite, appear to be of aqueo- 

 igneous origin, having been produced by the action of the 

 absorbed gases upon the molten glass from which they were 

 liberated during the cryst.allisation consequent upon cooling. It 

 .also seems highly probable that the differences in consistency and 

 in the phases of crystallisation producing the lamination of this 

 rock were directly due to the amount of vapours absorbed in the 

 various Layers of the lava and to their mineralising influence. — 

 The latest volcanic eruption in Northern California, and its 

 peculiar lava, by J. S. Diller. The volcanic district here 

 described is that of the so-called "Cinder Cone," near Snag 

 Lake, North California, where the recent character of the 

 eruptive phenomena is most striking as compared with other out- 

 bursts in the same region. The lava field, some three square 

 miles in extent, is of basaltic type, but remarkably anomalous in 

 containing numerous grains of quartz, and veiy high percentages 

 of silica and magnesia with correspondingly low quantities ot 

 the oxides of iron. — On the texture of massive rocks, by 



