526 



NATURE 



[July 24, 1913 



for headships of colleges which continues to be 

 the keystone of the structure of Cambridge society. 



He was sent to Eton, where he was not very 

 happy, and then passed on to Trinity. As an 

 undergraduate he wrote with characteristic 

 exaggeration: "Really, I cannot but think it 

 quite monstrous that everyone is to waste four- 

 and-twenty years of their life in learning two 

 dead languages which can never be of the slightest 

 use to them " ; but he obtained a place in the 

 first class of the Classical Tripos in 1856, and his 

 exertions were rewarded by a fellowship in 1858. 

 Vacancies were not so scarce then as they are 

 now ; the average tenure was, no doubt, much 

 shorter. " I never ought to have got a fellowship, 

 but there happened to be eight vacant that year, 

 and they gave me one." 



It was the same all through his life — things 

 happened. After obtaining his fellowship, he pro- 

 ceeded to amuse himself with foreign travel and 

 otherwise. " He took an active Dart . . . especi- 

 ally in the A.D.C.," and so he became for many 

 years stage-manager of the University for dons 

 and men, and the drama was his hobby. When 

 his fellowship lapsed, in 1866, he retained his 

 rooms in Trinity because he was supposed to be 

 engaged upon the college records, and he was 

 deputy junior bursar in charge of the buildings, 

 and deputy librarian in charge of the books. He 

 only returned the muniments which gave him a 

 title to rooms, duly "calendared," forty-four years 

 later, but he soon became the leading authority 

 on college buildings and the care of books. His 

 father included comparative anatomy in the sub- 

 ject which he professed, and collected specimens 

 in illustration. When he grew old, his classical 

 son helped with the "museum," and so, when his 

 father resigned, became superintendent of the 

 Museum of Comparative Anatomy, while human 

 anatomy went to G. M. Humphry, and a new pro- 

 fessorship of zoology was created. The attitude 

 of the new professor to the Museum of Zoology 

 and Comparative Anatomy is characteristic of him- 

 self and of one side of Cambridge. 



"The prevalent belief, I take it to be, is that 

 the professor of zoology ought to look after the 

 museum. I need not say how absurd this is. . . . 

 One notion that underlies it all is that your 

 salary ( ! ) may be saved to the University, which, 

 of course, is false, because I should never, under 

 any circumstances, take on me such additional 

 duties without an equivalent." 



The appointment as superintendent and the 

 lapse of his fellowship, since "J." was not in 

 "orders," occurred in the same year; and, at the 

 same time, he became a member of the newly 

 formed Museums and Lecture Rooms Syndicate, 

 NO. 2282, VOL. 91] 



and later he became secretary. The history of 

 this syndicate, now at an end, is neither more 

 nor less than the history of the development of 

 the study of the natural sciences in Cambridge, 

 and it nearly all "happened" while "J." was 

 secretary. How it all happened, perhaps no one 

 can say ; new statutes and a Royal Commission, 

 a few far-sighted dons, and private benefactors had 

 something to with it, but "J.," without professing 

 anything, or being what one could call a don, 

 was there all the time, a sort of nucleus for growth. 

 That "J." was a Trinity man goes without saying, 

 but, perhaps more than anyone else, he stood for 

 the University as distinguished from the colleges. 

 Of his college he became auditor, a sort of external 

 guardian, but of the University he was so much 

 a part that the statutory offices of librarian and 

 registrary, for which the colleges had never claimed 

 a right in rotation, seemed his own. Popular 

 election gave him the latter in 1891, and in that 

 he served the University until close upon his 

 death in 1910. 



In 1873, when his position in Cambridge was 

 established, "J." happened to propose to, and 

 marry, Miss Frances Matilda Buchanan, whose 

 father was at the time British Ambassador at 

 Vienna. According to his biographer, this was 

 the best thing he ever did, and certainly he owed 

 to it no small part of his success as a man of the 

 world. The book abounds with stories and letters 

 of affectionate family life, of deep and lasting 

 friendships, and of unconstrained sociability with 

 all men of proper tone, quite irrespective of age 

 or academic standing. "J." was a very helpful 

 friend, but he never patronised. 



Thus "J." made the most of a very fortunate 

 opportunism ; he never set out deliberately to 

 be a zoologist, or a man of books, or an archaeo- 

 logist, and he certainly did not try to be a social 

 success ; yet he was all these things because they 

 came in his way. 



How like to his University! While "J." lived 

 his life, Cambridge, out of the rivalry of her 

 colleges, developed from her " tripos " a scheme of 

 examination which has overspread the Civil 

 Service and the whole educational system of the 

 country, without any more motive than to "doe 

 the nexte thyng." It has somehow added study 

 to study, laboratory to laboratory, museum to 

 museum until it has obtained a magnificent estab- 

 lishment for the University, as distinct from the 

 colleges, and the old close society has become 

 absorbed in a larger life. Those who remember 

 the material provision which the University had 

 in the early 'seventies for Maxwell, Stokes, Foster, 

 Liveing, Dewar, and compare it with the 

 scientific palaces that are now to be found there- 



