Xlll 



Journal," vol. civ, 1830). By the observations which were described 

 in this paper, many of which were entirely new, Dr. Sharpey 

 appears to have been the first to point out distinctly the general 

 distribution among animals, and the essential nature and uses of the 

 phenomena of ciliary motion ; and although it is true that he 

 afterwards found he had been anticipated in one of the most im- 

 portant of his observations, and that at the time of his first publica- 

 tion, from the want of a sufficiently powerful microscope, he was un- 

 successful in detecting the presence of cilia in the Batrachia, his later 

 observations led to that result, and his observations on a number of 

 animals greatly amplified and confirmed the general conclusions which 

 followed from the important discovery by Purkinje and Valentin in 

 1834, of the existence of cilia in vertebrate animals. 



In 1835, Dr. Sharpey published in " The Edinburgh New Philo- 

 sophical Journal," a translation of the preliminary memoir in which 

 the discovery of Purkinje and Valentin was announced, and at the 

 same time gave an account of additional observations on the subject 

 made by himself ; and he soon afterwards embodied the whole of the 

 information on Cilia and ciliary motion in a systematic form in his 

 article " Cilia," published in the " Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and 

 Physiology," in 1836, but which he had been engaged in preparing for 

 several years previously. 



Dr. Sharpey also contributed the article " Echinodermata," which 

 appeared in the same publication in 1837, and which, like that of 

 " Cilia," contained a large amount of original matter, and added 

 greatly to his scientific reputation. 



In 1833 he published an abstract of Ehrenberg's discoveries on the 

 Infusoria in " The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal." In 1834 

 he took an active part in the proceedings of the Meeting of the British 

 Association at Edinburgh, and communicated a paper founded on his 

 own observations on the peculiar convoluted disposition of the blood- 

 vessels in the common porpoise. 



In 1834, Dr. Sharpey was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of 

 Edinburgh. 



We now come to the period of Dr. Sharpey 's career when he was 

 about to be called to a wider sphere of exertion in the metropolis. 

 In the summer of 1836, upon the resignation by Dr. Jones Quain of 

 the chair of Anatomy and Physiology in the then University of 

 London, a desire was felt by the leading professors and authorities of 

 that institution to give greater prominence than had previously been 

 done in the London schools of medicine to the subjects of physiology 

 and physiological anatomy, and, after due inquiry, Dr. Sharpey was, 

 in the course of July, selected as the fittest person to fill the chair 

 and carry out the object in view. He was accordingly appointed to 

 the chair designated as of Anatomy and Physiology, while Mr. 



