261 



Arts," led to his appointment, in 1808, to the Professorship of 

 Anatomy to the Royal Academy, a situation which he filled with 

 great advantage to the students during a period of sixteen years. 



Sir Anthony Carlisle was not less distinguished for his know- 

 ledge of anatomy, physiology, and natural history, than for his 

 professional merits, and for his patience and skill as an instructor 

 of medical students. As a practitioner, he was invariably kind and 

 attentive to those who were entrusted to his care, and eminently 

 liberal in devoting his professional services to those who had no 

 adequate means of repaying them. 



Mr. Nicholas Aylward Vigors was born in 1787, at Old 

 Leighlin, in the county of Carlow, where his family had long re- 

 sided. After the usual preparatory education, he proceeded to the 

 University of Oxford, where he became a very diligent and success- 

 ful student. On quitting the University, he purchased a commis- 

 sion in the Guards, and distinguished himself highly at the battle 

 of Barossa, by continuing to bear the colours of his regiment after 

 he was severely wounded. On his return from the Peninsula, he 

 was prevailed upon, by the earnest entreaties of his family, to quit 

 the army ; and he devoted himself afterwards, with characteristic 

 ardour, to scientific and literary pursuits. 



Mr. Vigors was one of the founders and the first Secretary of the 

 Zoological Society, to whose museum he gave his very valuable 

 collections of ornithology and entomology, which were the two 

 branches of natural history he had most carefidly studied. He 

 was the author of a very elaborate paper in the Linnean Transac- 

 tions*, "On the Natural Affinities which connect the Orders and 

 Families of Birds," in which he attempted to apply in detail the 

 same principles of arrangement that Mr. MacLeay had previously 

 sketched out in his HorcB EntoraologiccB^ in a more general way, 

 as applicable to the whole animal kingdom. He afterwards pub- 

 lished, in "conjunction with Dr. Horsfield, another very valuable 

 memoirf on the Birds of Australia, grounded upon a rich collection 

 from that country, in the possession of the Linnean Society, which 

 they described and arranged according to their natural affinities. 

 He was likewise the principal editor, during several years, of the 

 " Zoological Journal," in which he wrote many memoirs, chiefly de- 

 voted to the further exposition of his views with respect to the 

 affinities of birds, but some of them descriptive of new or rare 

 Mammalia, or new forms of exotic insects or birds. 



Mr. Vigors was a man of very considerable attainments as a 

 scholar as well as a naturalist, and made a liberal use of an ample 

 private fortune in the promotion of those sciences which he culti- 

 vated : he was the representative in Parliament, for some years be- 

 fore his death, first of the city, and lastly of the county of Carlow. 



Mr. RiCKMAN was born in 1771? and educated at Westminster 

 School, from whence he proceeded as a student to Christ Church, 

 Oxford. Early in life he was recommended by Dean Jackson as 



* Linnean Transactions, vol. xiv. 



t Ibid., vol. XV. 



