CHAPTER V 



THE HUNTERIAN MUSEUM continued 



In estimating the value of Flower's work, begun in 

 1862 at the Hunterian Museum, it should be re- 

 membered that comparative anatomy was in a great 

 measure in its earlier days the basis of the theory of 

 evolution. That new and leading idea was attracting 

 the greater part of the speculative interest of the time 

 when Flower began to illustrate in concrete form 

 and logical series the facts on which it rests. To 

 show how quickly he was in the field, it will be 

 remembered that it was not much more than three 

 years before his appointment that Charles Darwin 

 wrote in his introduction to the Origin of Species :— 



My work is now (1859) nearly finished ; but as it will 

 take me many more years to complete it, and as my health is 

 far from strong, I have been urged to publish this abstract. I 

 have more especially been induced to do this as Mr. Wallace, 

 who is now studying the natural history of the Malay Archipelago, 

 has arrived at almost exactly the same general conclusions as I 

 have on the origin of species. In 1858 he sent me a memoir on 

 this subject, with a request that I would forward it to Sir Charles 

 Lyell, who sent it to the Linnsean Society, and it is published in 

 the third volume of the journal of that Society. Sir C. Lyell 

 and Dr. Hooker, who both knew of my work, the latter having 



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