MEMOIR 41 
described how ably he organized their various clubs and 
arranged the functions connected with them. The Univer¬ 
sity Sports Union was especially near his heart, and the 
members presented him with an inscribed silver loving-cup, 
as a token of their affection and respect. The numerous 
pupils who sat at his feet during his thirty-two years’ occu¬ 
pancy of his Chair—for he resigned it only in 1919—were 
enthusiastic admirers of one who could not only instruct 
but likewise inspire. As Professor Scott has well said in The 
Australasian : 
‘Old students of biology at the University of Melbourne tell of the 
swift dexterity with which Baldwin Spencer would take a few coloured 
chalks and illustrate on the blackboard his remarks on the protective 
colouration of birds and animals, or the function of brilliant floral 
colour in facilitating the fertilization of plants. He was, indeed, a very 
great man of science, and all the greater in that field because he had 
the soul of an artist.’ 
Again, his services cannot be over-praised as a promoter 
and organizer of those vast collections of Australia s indige¬ 
nous marvels at which, in company with the rest of the 
British Association in 1914, I gazed with feelings that verged 
on awe; so little had Europe prepared one for such a sight. 
In 1899, on the death of Sir Frederick McCoy, who for 
over thirty years had been Head of the National IVIuseum, 
Spencer undertook to be its Honorary Director; his first act 
being to recommend its transfer to a new and more com¬ 
modious building. Facing manfully the vast toil entailed by 
the consequent rearrangement—and here no doubt his early 
experience with the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford stood 
him in good stead—he saw to it that the Australasian ex¬ 
hibits were assembled together and given all the prominence 
that they deserved; while he quietly added to them many 
thousands of zoological specimens collected and preserved 
by his own hand. He likewise contributed a rich store of 
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