500 APPENDIX. 



according to Mr. Hunter's alleged injunctions, thirty years ago ? Why 

 preserve them till after the last sheet of Sir Everard's fourth volume 

 was printed off; and till Dr. Baillie had left London never to return? 

 Sir Everard Home told me of his having burnt them July 26th, 1823 ; 

 Dr. Baillie languished till the 23rd of September following. 



" Mr. Hunter died suddenly at the age of sixty-five, too suddenly to 

 make any request of that kind had Sir Everard been present ; and he 

 was too well convinced of the value of his laboius to have made such a 

 request before. 



"Mr. Hunter's Will is sufficient evidence that he intended thecollection 

 to be sold, and in one entire lot ; knowing that it would lose much of 

 its value if divided, and that everything relating to it as a whole must 

 have its value. Everything he did, or wrote, all tended to this one 

 object; they were not like other subjects written on the spur of the 

 moment, or to suit a particular occasion, which when past would have 

 no further interest; these were not the subjects which occupied Mr. 

 Hunter's mind ; and although every one who knew him was aware of 

 the difficulty he had in expressing himself so as to satisfy his own ideas 

 on any subject, yet it was not for want of great labour if they were 

 not to his satisfaction at last ; for I have many times written the same 

 page at least half a dozen times over, with corrections and transpositions 

 almost without end : and after all this labour, can it be supposed that 

 he imagined or felt their imperfections so strongly, as to desire their 

 indiscriminate destruction, while he evidently intended the collection to 

 remain ? 



" Even had Mr. Hunter laid such an injunction on his executors, it 

 is clear that no time was specified ; that if they were to be preserved for 

 thirty years after his death, it could only be with a view to their being 

 usefully employed : and had he made the request at all, he wordd have 

 little merited the high character which has been almost universally 

 conceded to him. " "War. Clift." 



In the Minute Book of the " Committee " or " Board of Curators," 

 preserved in the Archives of the Royal College of Surgeons, under date 

 of April 2nd, 1839, is the following :— 



" Mr. Clift laid before the Committee, presented to the Museum by 

 Capt. Sir Everard Home, Bart., the manuscript of the first part of Mr. 

 Hunter's Introduction to the Catalogue of his Collection of Extraneous 

 Fossils, containing many of Mr. Hunter's corrections of the manu- 

 script."' 



