CHAPTER I 

 1879 



Much of the work noted down for 1878 reappears in 

 my father's list for 1879. He was still at work upon, or 

 meditating his Crayfish, his Introduction to Psychology, the 

 Spirula Memoir, and a new edition of the Elementary Physi- 

 ology. Professor H. N. Martin writes about the changes 

 necessary for adapting the " Practical Biology " to American 

 needs; the article on Harvey was waiting to be put into 

 permanent form. Besides giving an address at the Working 

 Men's College, he lectured on Sensation and the Uniformity 

 of the Sensiferous Organs (Coll. Ess. vi.), at the Royal In- 

 stitution, Friday evening, March 7 ; and on Snakes, both at 

 the Zoological Gardens, June 5, and at the London Insti- 

 tution, December 1. On February 3 he read a paper at the 

 Royal Society on " The Characters of the Pelvis in the 

 Mammalia, and the Conclusions respecting the Origin of 

 Mammals which may be based on them " ; and published in 

 Nature for November 6 a paper on " Certain Errors Re- 

 specting the Structure of the Heart, attributed to Aristotle.'' 



Great interest attaches to this paper. He had always 

 wondered how Aristotle, in dissecting a heart, had come to 

 assert that it contained only three chambers ; and the desire 

 to see for himself what stood in the original, uncommented 

 on by translators who were not themselves anatomists, was 

 one of the chief reasons (I think the wish to read the Greek 

 Testament in the original was another) which operated in 

 making him take up the study of Greek late in middle life. 

 His practice was to read in his book until he had come to 

 ten new words ; these he looked out, parsed, and wrote 

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