172 SIR WILLIAM FLOWER chap. 



on the whales and seals discoursing in his pleasant gentle style 

 and clear language on subjects with which he is so completely 

 conversant is an intellectual treat which the most erudite 

 zoologist may well enjoy ; and as I looked on the dead whale's 

 body I could not but feel that the public as well as the 

 proprietors had sustained a double loss. 



In a comprehensive though necessarily condensed 

 review of Sir William's work contributed to Nature, 

 Professor E. Ray Lankester, his successor, says : — 



After the deaths of P. J. van Beneden and Jervais he was only 

 rivalled in his knowledge of whales by Sir William Turner of 

 Edinburgh. It was a special satisfaction to him to have been 

 able to complete the admirable exhibition of whales at the 

 Natural History Museum before his retirement — an exhibition 

 which is not only unequalled, but is not even attempted in 

 Europe or America. 



In two lectures given, the one at the Royal 

 Institution in 1883, and the other at the Royal 

 Colonial Institution in 1895, he summed up the 

 results of his long and patient attention to this 

 subject in a form which, though necessarily popular, 

 is perhaps the most instructive material dealing 

 with the structure and history of the whale and 

 the story of the whale fisheries.^ That read at 

 the Colonial Institute described not only the 

 whale, but gave the history of the British and 

 Colonial whale fisheries, ancient and modern, with 

 the records of which he was very familiar. It is 

 a curious story, then for the first time brought 



* They are reprinted in Flower's Essays on Museums (Macmillan). 



