348 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. [Sess. 
to science and to practical medicine, which let light into dark places, was 
that of placentation, begun in 1870, when he published a paper in the Trans. 
Roy. Soc. Edin., “ On the Gravid Uterus and on the Arrangement of the 
Foetal Membrane in the Cetacea.’ 5 He lectured on the comparative anatomy 
of the placenta in the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1875 and 
1876, and returned to the subject from time to time up to 1889. 
The anatomy of whales had fascinated the Edinburgh anatomists 
Knox, John Goodsir, and John Struthers, afterwards Sir John Struthers 
of Aberdeen. Turner fell a victim to the same fascination in 1860, and 
continued to write papers on the Cetacea until 1914. He began with a 
paper in our Transactions on the thyroid gland in the Cetacea, with obser- 
vations on the relations of the thymus to the thyroid in these and some 
other mammals. Goodsir had a good collection of cetacean specimens in the 
Anatomical Museum, but Turner increased this very largely, and induced 
Sir John Struthers to take a benevolent interest in the museum, and 
especially in the cetacean bones, when he returned to Edinburgh from 
Aberdeen after he retired from his chair of anatomy. 
The great Finner whale stranded at Longniddry in 1869 was un- 
doubtedly the largest subject ever dissected by Turner, and tested the 
ardour of himself and of his pupil and colleague in the work, Dr James 
Foulis. This whale, a pregnant female, 78 feet 9 inches in length, was 
left on the beach for inspection by the public, who were conveyed by 
special trains ; and when the stench of putrefaction became so grievous that 
ordinary persons could not approach the carcass, it was towed across the 
Firth to have the blubber removed and other parts turned into money. It 
was reported that at Longniddry an incautious visitor fell into the tongue 
when walking on a lower jaw-bone. Turner and Foulis pursued the whale 
to Kirkcaldy and accomplished feats of observation and dissection, with 
the result that Foulis had to part with his suit of clothes, and Turner, 
although more cautious, found that his footprints were an object of great 
interest to all dogs that crossed his track. 
There are papers about the Longniddry whale in the Proceedings and 
Transactions of this Society of 1869 and 1870, and Turner was awarded 
the Neill Prize in 1871 for this investigation. The sternum and ossa inno- 
minata are described in the Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, 1870. 
Turner made his debut as a craniologist with papers before the British 
Association Newcastle-on-Tyne meeting in 1863, and these papers, together 
with papers in our Proceedings and in the Proceedings of the Society of 
Antiquaries of Scotland for 1864 and 1865, show that he had accepted 
the doctrines of Darwin notwithstanding the opposition of Owen and 
