Annual Report of the Council. 21 1 



supported by evidence as sure as any evidence in biological 

 science can be. To this faculty of open-mindedness and 

 perceptivity of the several sides of a question was due, in a 

 great measure, his success as a teacher. Neither his lectures^ 

 nor his text books, were ever overloaded with facts or 

 theories. Facts were given plainly and deliberately, 

 theory was never expressed dogmatically. His per- 

 sonal success may be in no small way attributed to 

 his great capacity for bringing to an issue every- 

 thing upon which he entered. To leave anything 

 unfinished was a matter of great annoyance to him. 

 Of his capacity for work, it is sufficient to say it seems 

 to have been unlimited. By his death, not only Science 

 and The Owens College have suffered an irreparable loss, 

 but Manchester and the surrounding district have to bear 

 the deprivation of one who had the rare faculty of arousing 

 in others interest in a subject to which they had 

 before been insensitive. This faculty Marshall possessed 

 in a very remarkable degree, and his success is evi- 

 denced by the invariably large and attentive audiences he 

 attracted in the many courses of Victoria University Exten- 

 sion Lectures and addresses to the Manchester Microscopical 

 Society, and elsewhere. His lectures on " Natural History '> 

 and " Animal Development " were models of what a popular 

 lecture should be ; they were sound science ; they were 

 never dull. As in his College lectures and his writings, he 

 followed out his often expressed dictum that, unless a 

 thought is capable of being expressed in simple language, 

 it is seldom worthy of expression at all. Professor Marshall 

 was elected President of the Manchester Microscopical 

 Society in 1887, and in this capacity he contributed to the 

 proceedings of the Society several valuable essays upon 

 the biological questions of the day. As President of the 

 Biological Section of the British Association in 1890, he 

 delivered at Leeds a brilliant Address upon the " Theory of 



