XXVI 



culture of the antiquary, historian, and philologist on the one hand, 

 and of the anatomist and zoologist on the other, and could make 

 these different branches of knowledge converge upon the complex 

 problems of man's early history. The chief results of his work of 

 this nature are contained in his contributions to Grreenwell's " British 

 Barrows " (1877), a book containing a fund of solid information 

 relating to the early inhabitants of this island. His last publication, 

 and one which is on the whole the most characteristic as exhibiting 

 his vast range of knowledge on many different subjects, was a lecture 

 delivered in 1879 at the Royal Geographical Society on " The Modifi- 

 cations of the External Aspects of Organic Nature produced by 

 Man's Interference." 



That Dr. R-olleston has not left more original scientific work behind 

 him is easily accounted for by the circumstances under which he lived 

 at Oxford. The multifarious nature of the subjects with which the 

 chair was overweighted ; the perpetual discussions in which during 

 the whole term of his office he was engaged consequent upon the 

 transitional condition of education, both at Oxford and elsewhere ; the 

 immense amount of business thrust upon him, or voluntarily undertaken 

 by him, of the kind which always accumulates round the few men 

 who are at the same time capable and unselfish, such as questions per- 

 taining to the local and especially to the sanitary affairs of the town in 

 which he lived, or questions connected with the reform of the medical 

 profession, arising both within and outside the Medical Council, which 

 latter business constantly brought him to meetings in London ; his 

 own wide grasp of interest in social subjects and deep feeling of 

 the responsibilities of citizenship, and a sense of the duties of social 

 hospitality, which made his house always open to scientific visitors to 

 Oxford : all these rendered impossible to him that intense concentra- 

 tion which is requisite for carrying out any continuous line of 

 research. 



He was often blamed for undertaking so much and such diverse 

 kinds of labour, so distracting to his scientific pursuits ; but being by 

 constitution a man who could never see a wrong without feeling a 

 burning desire to set it right, who could never " pass by on the other 

 side " when he felt that it was in his power to help, nothing but 

 actual physical impossibility would restrain him. For several years past, 

 when feeling that his health and strength did not respond to the strain 

 he put upon them, he resorted to every hygienic measure suggested 

 but one, and that the one he most required — rest ; but this he never 

 could or would take. During the last term he spent at Oxford, before 

 his medical friends positively forced him (though unfortunately too late) 

 to give up his occupations and seek change in a more genial climate, 

 he was working at the highest pressure, rising every morning at six 

 o'clock, to get two uninterrupted hours in which to write the revised 



