384 Obituary — Sir William Henry Flower, K.C.B. 



Succession of the Teeth in the Marsupialia," 1867, in which the 

 remarkable peculiarities of the milk-dentition in that group of 

 animals were first clearly demonstrated ; " The Affinities and 

 Probable Habits of the Extinct Australian Marsupial Thylacoleo/* 

 1868 ; " On a newly-discovered Extinct Mammal from Patagonia," 

 1873 ; seven memoirs on the anatomy of the Cetacea, or whale- 

 like animals, in the Trans. Zool. Soc. ; and in the Proceedings, 

 papers on the " Classification of the Carnivora," on the Anatomy 

 of the Musk-Deer, the Elephant-Seal, the Common Fin-Whale, and 

 many other animals ; " Observations on the Osteology of the Natives 

 of the Andaman Islands," 1879, of the Fijians, 1880, and the Malli- 

 collese in 1881 ; " The Pal aeon tological Evidences of the Gradual 

 Modification of Animal Forms," 1873; "The Extinct Animals of 

 North America," 1876; and " Native Eaces of the Pacific," 1878. 



His separate works comprise " Introduction to the Osteology of 

 Mammalia," of which three editions have been published ; " Intro- 

 duction to the Study of Mammalia, Living and Extinct " (in con- 

 junction with E. Lydekker, F.E.S.), 1891 ; "The Horse, a Study in 

 Natural History," 1892 ; and " Essays on Museums and other 

 subjects connected with Natural History," 1898. The long series of 

 articles on Mammalia in the " Encyclopasdia Britannica" were also 

 written by Sir William Flower. 



Apart from Flower's position as a leading authority on the 

 Mammalia, more especially the Cetacea, he will always be recognized 

 as facile princeps amongst Museum Curators : his chief object in 

 life since his appointment to the post of Conservator of the Museum 

 of the Eoyal College of Surgeons, and until his retirement from 

 the Directorship of the Natural History Museum, Cromwell Eoad, 

 having been to arrange, display, and label specimens, so as to give 

 to the inquiring student, or the intelligent visitor the greatest 

 instruction and enjoyment from a survey of the cases and galleries 

 under his charge. He certainly inspired all those who were capable 

 of being influenced Ly his example with a spirit of emulation and 

 a desire to make the very best of their own section of the Museum. 

 The remarkable series of illustrations of variation, of coloration, of 

 mimicry, and of the anatomy of the vertebrata, which adorn the cases 

 of the Central Hall, are in themselves a monument to his genius. 



Although unable, through failing health and weakened bodily 

 powers, to achieve the completion of the rearrangement of the 

 Zoological Galleries (a task undertaken far too late for realization), 

 he was nevertheless enabled to show in a temporary annexe at the 

 west end of the Museum the most instructive series of models of 

 Cetacea, displaying on one side the actual skeleton and on the 

 other the restored external life-like characters of these huge monsters 

 of the deep, which, belonging to the highest group of vertebrate 

 animals, yet surpass in bulk the hugest of the old Dinosaurs or 

 any other extinct reptiles that trod the earth, or tenanted the waters 

 in Jurassic or Cretaceous times. 



Truly it may be said of Flower in connection with the arrange- 

 ment of the collections in the Natural History Museum — 



" Si monumentum qussris, ciroumspice." H. W. 



