xi 



all the institutions and trusts that he took a share in administering ; and 

 his loss to them must be accounted a positive calamity. — A. B. 



Dr. Augustus Waller was the son of Mr. William Waller, of Elver- 

 ton Farm, near Faversham in Kent, and was born on the 21st of December, 

 1816. The family left England to reside at Nice, where Mr. Waller died 

 when his son was only fourteen years old. The son came to England, and 

 lived for some time with Dr. Lacon Lambe, of Tewkesbury, but afterwards 

 resided with and studied under Dr. William Lambe, who was a well-known 

 vegetarian ; and the youth was brought up to the age of eighteen on a 

 purely vegetable diet, his father having been a strict disciple of Dr. 

 Lambe. 



Augustus Waller went through his course of medical study at Paris, 

 and took his degree of M.D. in that University in 1840, when he was 

 twenty-four years of age. In 1842 he entered upon general medical 

 practice at Kensington, and two years later married Matilda, only daughter 

 of John Walls, Esq., of North End, Fulham, who survives him. 



But while steadily following his vocation as a medical man, his mind 

 was irresistibly bent on scientific investigation, and what time he could 

 spare from attendance on patients was employed in carrying on original 

 researches in physiology and physiological anatomy. Accordingly during 

 this period of his career he published several important contributions to 

 those sciences, two of which obtained a place in the Philosophical Trans- 

 actions* ; and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1851. 



Meanwhile his scientific pursuits came to engross more and more of his 

 time and thought, and, after a few years, he resolved to give up his prac- 

 tice, which had already become considerable, and to devote himself to 

 science as the main occupation of his life. In pursuance of this deter- 

 mination, and with a view to meet with more favourable opportunities of 

 carrying on his scientific work, he left England in 1851 and took up his 

 residence for some time at Bonn. The influence of his more favourable 

 position soon became manifest. In association with Professor Budge, he 

 engaged in experimental inquiries on the influence of the nervous system 

 upon the motion of the iris, by which it was shown that the influence of 

 the cervical portion of the sympathetic nerve in maintaining the dilatation 

 of the pupil is derived from a particular region of the spinal cord ; and fresh 

 light was at the same time thrown on the constitution and central relations 

 of that nerve. These researches were made known in three memoirs pub- 

 lished in the ' Comptes Rendus' for 1851 and 1852, in the joint names 

 of the authors, and were honoured with the award of the Monthyon Prize 

 of the Academy of Sciences for 1852. Dr. Waller subsequently carried on 



* " On the Minute Structure of the Papilla) and Nerves of the Tongue of the Frog 

 and Toad," Phil. Trans. 1849; and "Experiments on the Section of the Glosso- 

 pharyngeal and Hypoglossal Norves of the Frog, and observations on the alterations 

 produced thereby in the Structuro of their Primitive Fibres," Phil. Trans, 1650. 



