AS CONSERVATOR OF THE MUSEUM OF THE COLLEGE OF SURGEONS, AND HUNTERIAN
PROFESSOR.
[1861-1884.]
The death, in 1861, of the eminent histological anatomist, Professor
Quekett, rendered vacant the important post of Conservator of the Museum
of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. This
museum, it is almost superfluous to mention, was founded by the great
anatomist, John Hunter, and is hence often known popularly, although not
officially, as the Hunterian Museum.
“Originally a private collection,” observed Flower in his Presidential
address to the Anatomical section of the International Medical Congress,
held in London in the summer of 1881, “embracing a large variety of
objects, it has been carried out and increased upon much the same
plan as that designed by the founder, with modifications only to suit
some of the requirements of advancing knowledge. The only portion of
Hunter’s biological collection which have been actually parted with are
the stuffed birds and beasts, which, with the sanction of the Trustees
appointed by the Government to see that the college performs its part of
the contract as custodians of the collection, were transferred to the
British Museum, and a considerable number of dried vascular preparations,
which having become useless in consequence of the deterioration in their
condition, resulting from age and decay, have been replaced by others
preserved by better methods.”
In regard to the special purposes served by this museum, it is mentioned
in the same address that it is maintained by the College of Surgeons “for
the benefit not only of its own members, but for that of the profession
at large, and indeed of all who take any interest in biological science,
whether the young student preparing for his examination, or the advanced
worker who has here found materials for many an important contribution
by which the boundaries of knowledge have been materially enlarged. To
all such it is freely open without fee or charge. Even the written or
personal introduction of members, still nominally required, is never
asked for on the four open days from any intelligent or interested
visitor; and on the one day of the week on which it is closed for
cleaning, facilities are always given to those who are desirous of
making special studies, and to the increasing number of lady students,
whether artistic, scholastic, or medical. Artists continually resort to
the museum to find opportunities of studying anatomy of man and animals,
which no other place in London affords; and of late years it has been
the means of a still wider diffusion of knowledge, by the visits which
have been organised on summer Saturday afternoons by various associations
of artizans, to whom a popular demonstration of its contents is usually
given by the Conservator.”
Elsewhere in the same address we find the following passage in connection
with the teaching functions of this body:—
“The various professorships and lectureships that are attached
to the College have grown up chiefly in consequence of one of the
conditions under which the Hunterian Collection was entrusted to it by
Government—that a course of no less than twenty-four lectures shall be
delivered annually by some member of the College upon Comparative Anatomy
and other subjects, illustrated by the preparations.”
For some years previously to Professor Quekett’s death the offices of
Conservator of the Museum of the College and of Hunterian Professor of
Anatomy had been disassociated; the occupant of the professorial chair
at the date in question being the late Professor T. H. Huxley, while, as
already mentioned, Quekett held the Conservatorship. At an earlier date
the two offices had, however, been held conjointly; Owen having fulfilled
the duties of both for a period of no less than twenty-five years.
It may be added that, from the varied nature of the collections under
his charge, the Conservator is expected to have a knowledge not only
of comparative anatomy and zoology, but likewise of palæontology,
physiology, surgery, and pathology.
Such a wide range of knowledge is possible to few men at the present day,
but it was possessed to a very considerable extent by Mr. Flower, even
at this comparatively early stage of his career; and as the appointment
was congenial to his tastes, he applied for, and in due course was
elected to, the Conservatorship. The acceptance of this involved the
complete abandonment of practice as a surgeon—a course of action which,
I believe, was never regretted. For eight years Mr. Flower discharged
the duties of the Conservatorship to the satisfaction of the Council of
the College; and when, in 1869, Professor Huxley found himself compelled
by the pressure of other duties to relinquish the Hunterian chair,
Flower was elected in 1870 to fill the vacancy. He thus, for the first
time in his career, became entitled to the designation of “Professor,”
and he continued to hold the two offices till his transference to the
British Museum. Here it may perhaps be well to mention, in order to avoid
confusion, that in the early part of Flower’s official career at the
College of Surgeons the post of Articulator to the museum was held by a
name-sake—Mr. James Flower.
For the first eight years of his connection with the museum in Lincoln’s
Inn Fields the time and attention of Flower were almost entirely devoted
to the improvement, augmentation, and rearrangement of the collections
under his charge; and even when his duties as Hunterian Professor claimed
a large share of his time, no efforts were spared to maintain the former
rate of progress in the museum.
To record in detail the improvements and alterations made in the museum
under Flower’s able administration would obviously not only occupy a
large amount of space but would, likewise, be wearisome to the reader.
Attention will therefore be concentrated on a few salient features in
connection with his work.
Although the anatomy of man naturally took a prominent place in what
used to be called the “physiological” series, yet the preparations
illustrating this subject were in the main restricted to the viscera; the
details of regional anatomy and of the arrangement and distribution of
muscles, vessels, and nerves not finding a place in the original scheme
of the museum. This appeared to Flower to be a serious omission, and
he soon set to work to exhibit human anatomy—largely on account of its
paramount importance to the members of the medical profession—on a much
more extensive scale than was previously the case, thereby affording by
means of permanent preparations a ready demonstration, accessible at all
times, of the structure of every part of the human frame. To those who
have already learnt their anatomy, it has been well remarked, and who
wish to refresh their memory, or verify a fact about which some passing
doubt may be felt, or to those who are precluded by circumstances from
visiting the dissecting room, the preparations of this series must prove
of great value.
In connection with this series may be mentioned the fact that Flower
published during the year he took office the work which heads the
list of his numerous scientific contributions, namely, _Diagrams of
the Nerves of the Human Body, exhibiting their Origin, Divisions and
Connections_, which was favourably received by the medical profession.
In the preparation of the anatomical series, Flower’s almost unrivalled
powers of dissection stood him in good stead, and it was probably during
this period of his career that he first acquired the rudiments of that
originality and care in museum arrangement and display that led to his
being called in after life by a German savant “the Prince of Museum
Directors.”
Perhaps, however, the portion of the museum under his charge in which
Flower was most deeply interested was that devoted to the dentition
and osteology of the different orders of the Mammalia. As regards the
osteological series, he expressed himself in the above-mentioned address
of 1881 in the following words:—
“On this head we claim to be somewhat in advance of other museums,
on account of the improvements which have been made of late years in
preparing and articulating dried skeletons, and in displaying portions
of the bony framework in an instructive manner. Formerly all the bones
were rigidly fixed together, so that their articular surfaces, if not
actually destroyed, were completely concealed, and no bone could possibly
be removed and separately examined. The aim of a series of changes in
the method of mounting skeletons introduced here, and now adopted, more
or less completely, in many other museums, has been to obviate all these
difficulties, and to make each bone, as far as possible, independent of
all the rest, whilst preserving the general aspect and form of the entire
skeleton.
“Another improvement in the osteological series introduced within
the last twenty years has been the formation of a special collection
designed to show the principal modifications of each individual skeleton
throughout the vertebrate classes, by the placing the homologous bones
of a number of different animals in juxtaposition. For convenience of
comparison, the specimens of this series are all placed in corresponding
positions, mounted on separate stands, and to each is attached a label
bearing the name of the bone and the animal to which it belongs. This
series is especially instructive to the students of elementary osteology,
and forms an introduction to the general series.”
It might have been added with perfect truth that this series of the
detached homologous bones of different animals is of equal value and
importance to both the palæontologist and the evolutionist; since with
its assistance the former has a ready means of ascertaining the nearest
relationships of any fossil bone that may be brought under his notice,
while the latter is able to observe the modifications that any particular
bone has undergone in different groups of animals. He may notice, for
instance, the elongation and slenderness distinctive of the humerus,
or arm-bone, of the bat, and contrast it with the short and broad
contour characterising the same bone in the mole, while he may observe
the elongation of some of the bones of the hind-limbs distinctive of
jumping mammals, and their almost total disappearance in the whales and
dolphins. If the preparation of this series of specimens (which appears
to have been closely connected with his lectures on the osteology of the
Mammalia, and their subsequent incorporation in the well-known volume
noticed in the sequel) had been the sole limit of the work accomplished
by Flower, it would still have been sufficient to entitle him to the
gratitude of posterity.
It was while engaged in the development of the collections of this museum
that Flower made his important observations on the homologies and mode of
succession of the teeth of various groups of mammals, and more especially
the marsupials. Here, too, it was that he undertook the investigations
which led to his publication of a new scheme of classification for
the Carnivora; and it was likewise during his Conservatorship that he
published his valuable series of observations upon the comparative
anatomy of the mammalian liver. These and other kindred subjects may,
however, better be considered at greater length in a later chapter. It
must suffice therefore, to add in this connection that during Flower’s
term of office the unrivalled series of human skeletons and skulls
underwent a very marked and important increase.
By no means the least important part of Flower’s work in connection with
the museum of the College of Surgeons was the compilation and publication
of the first two volumes of the _Catalogue of Osteological Specimens_ the
first, dealing with man alone, issued in 1879, and the second, written
with the aid of his assistant, Dr. J. G. Garson, and treating of the
other members of the mammalian class, in 1884. The importance of these
works consists in the fact of their being a very great deal more than
mere catalogues of the contents of one particular museum. They are,
on the contrary, systematic treatises, embodying the views of their
chief author on such important subjects as zoological nomenclature and
classification, and on the best method of arranging museums which include
specimens of the dentition and osteology of both living and extinct
animals. They accordingly deserve notice at some considerable length, not
only on this account, but as forming a record of the great changes Flower
introduced into the museum at this period under his charge.
It appears that the first printed list of the contents of the museum was
published in the year 1831. In a few years, however, it became evident
that a work of a more ambitious nature was required; and in January 1842,
the then Conservator, Professor Owen, presented a report to the Council,
on the supreme advantage to be gained by combining in the proposed new
Catalogue both the recent and the fossil osteological Catalogues. Acting
on this, the Committee of Council resolved that such a Catalogue should
be prepared and published, and the duty of doing this was thereupon
confided to Mr. Owen.
For some reason or other, this excellent and far-seeing resolution
was not acted upon in its entirety; and although catalogues were in
due course compiled by Owen and published, the specimens belonging to
animals still extant were entered in volumes quite distinct from these
devoted to fossil bones and teeth; while the two series of specimens were
likewise kept apart in the museum itself. “Hence,” as Flower subsequently
observed, “each series was incomplete, and required reference to the
other for its perfect illustration and comprehension.” These defects
were remedied during the administration of Flower, who not only arranged
the extinct specimens in their proper position among those belonging
to recent animals, but likewise followed the same admirable plan in
drawing up the Catalogues. Later on, as we shall see in the sequel, he
endeavoured to introduce the same scheme into the Natural History Museum,
but was prevented by the force of circumstances from carrying his views
into full effect, although a small step in the right direction was
accomplished.
The first part of the Catalogue of the osteological specimens in the
museum of the College which, as already said, is devoted to man alone,
is a most laborious, accurate, and valuable work, dealing first with the
general osteology of man, then with his dentition, and, thirdly, with
the special characters of the osteology and dentition of the different
races of the human species—a line of study which had formed the subject
of several of his lectures as Hunterian Professor. Nor is this by
any means all, for the introduction to this volume forms a valuable
compendium of the principles and rules of the science of craniology; the
remarks on the mode of measuring skulls, and the method of calculating
from such measurements “indices,” whereby skulls of different types can
be compared with one another with exactness, being models of accuracy and
clearness, and rendered the more valuable from the tables by which they
are accompanied. For measuring the cubic contents of skulls, Flower was
convinced that mustard-seed formed the best and most accurate medium.
In addition to its value as a summary of the contents of that portion of
the museum of which it treats, and as a _précis_ of its chief author’s
views at that time as to the classification of mammals, the second part
of the Catalogue is of special importance on account of containing an
expression of opinion on the subject of zoological nomenclature—a subject
on which Flower had previously spoken in no uncertain tones in his
Presidential Address to the Zoological section of the British Association
at the meeting held in Dublin in 1878, which is republished in _Essays on
Museums_.
The keynote of Flower’s introduction to his Catalogue was the urgent need
of uniformity of nomenclature among zoologists; and on this, and the
subject generally, he expressed himself as follows:—
“As there is no matter of such great importance in a catalogue as the
correct naming of the objects described in it, this part of the subject
has engaged a very large share of attention in preparing the work. I
am not sanguine enough to suppose that the names I have adopted—always
after careful research and consideration—will in every case be deemed
satisfactory by other zoologists, yet I hope that some advance will
have been made towards that most desirable end—a fixed and generally
recognised nomenclature of all the best-known species of mammals.
Having selected the generic and specific name which I considered most
appropriate, I have given the place and date of their first occurrence,
but have only admitted such synonyms as have found their way into
standard works, judging it better that the remainder should be buried in
oblivion, or at all events only retained in professedly bibliographical
treatises. In selecting the name chosen, I have been mainly guided by
the views which have been gradually gaining general currency among
conscientious naturalists of all nations, and which were formulated in
what is commonly called the Stricklandian Code, adopted by a Committee
of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1842, and
revised and reprinted by the Association in 1865, and again in 1878....
The regulations laid down in these codes for the formation of new names
are unimpeachable; and although some of the rules for the selection
of names already in existence have given rise to criticism, and are
occasionally difficult of practical application when an endeavour is made
to enforce them too rapidly, they do in the main, when interpreted with
discretion and common-sense, lead to satisfactory results. As what we are
aiming at is simply convenience and general accord, and not abstract
justice or truth, there are cases in which the rigid law of priority,
even if it can be ascertained, requires qualification, as it is certainly
not advisable to revive an obsolete or almost unknown name at the
expense of one, which if not strictly legitimate, has been universally
accepted and become thoroughly incorporated in zoological and anatomical
literature; and it is often better to put up with a small error or
inconvenience in an existing name than to incur the much larger confusion
caused by the introduction of a new one.”
These are weighty words of wisdom, and it must be a matter for profound
regret to all persons of thoroughly philosophical and well-balanced minds
that, by the newer school of naturalists—led by an American section—they
have not only been received without the attention they merit as coming
from a man of Flower’s wide experience and mature judgment, but have
been absolutely ignored and the principle they inculcate treated with
disdain and contempt. Obscure names, frequently of the most barbarous
construction and sound, have been raked up from all conceivable sources
and substituted for the well-known terms adopted by Flower and many of
his contemporaries; while, to make matters worse, the good old rule
that no names antedating the twelfth edition of the _Systema Naturæ_ of
Linnæus should be recognised in zoological literature has, so far as
mammals are concerned, been treated absolutely as a dead letter.
If it be asked what has been the result of thus ignoring the deliberately
expressed and matured views of a judicial mind like Flower’s, and
whether we are perceptibly nearer the attainment of uniformity in the
matter of biological nomenclature, the reply must be that the subject
is in a more unsatisfactory state than ever, and the desired end as far
off. It is perfectly true, indeed, that a section of the students of
the systematic side of zoology have agreed among themselves to employ
only such names as they believe to be the earliest, quite irrespective
of the obscurity of their origin or the rule that such names should be
compounded according to classic usage. When, however, we take a broader
survey of the field of biology, we find that, almost to a man, the
anatomists, the palæontologists, the geologists, the evolutionists, the
students of geographical distribution, and other writers who discuss the
subject from aspects other than the purely systematic, adhere to the
more conservative side in respect of nomenclature. Moreover, even if
this were not the case, we should be but little forwarder, seeing that
in works like Darwin’s _Origin of Species_ and Wallace’s _Geographical
Distribution of Mammals_—which must remain classical so long as zoology
lasts as a science—the older style of nomenclature is used. Consequently,
even if the proposed emendations and changes were universally adopted,
the names employed by these and other contemporary writers would still
have to be learnt and committed to memory by all zoological students; so
that, instead of one series of names, as would have been practically the
case had Flower’s proposal been loyally adopted by his contemporaries and
followers, we are compelled to know and remember a double series.
Whether in the end there will not be a reversion to the judicial and
temperate conservative compromise proposed by Flower—and almost
everything in this world is based more or less upon compromise—from the
headstrong and radical mode of procedure followed by some of the younger
zoologists, remains to be seen.
Another subject on which Flower insisted very strongly in the work under
consideration was the inadvisability of multiplying generic and family
divisions in zoology. Here again we may quote his own words.
“I do not mean,” he writes, “that with the advancement of knowledge
improvements cannot be continually made in the current arrangement of
genera. The older groups become so unwieldy by the discovery of new
species belonging to them that they must be broken up, if only for the
sake of convenience; newly discovered forms which cannot be placed in
any of the established genera must have new genera constituted for them,
and fuller knowledge of the structure of an animal may necessitate its
removal from one genus into another; all these are incidents in the
legitimate progress of science. Such alterations should, however, never
be made lightly and without a full sense of responsibility for the
difficulties which may be occasioned by them, and which often can never
be removed. Complete agreement upon this subject can never be expected,
as the idea of a _genus_, of an assemblage of animals to which a common
generic name may be attached, cannot be defined in words, and only exists
in the imagination of the different persons making use of the expression;
but there might be no difficulty in coming to some general agreement, if
individual zoologists would look at the idea as held by the majority,
and would not give way to the impulse to bestow a name wherever there is
the slightest opening for doing so.”
Here, again, we have golden words, which are unfortunately ignored by a
large number of the zoologists and palæontologists of the present day.
Most noteworthy, perhaps, in the whole passage, is the emphasis given to
the fact that generic groups are but arbitrary creations of the human,
and that, far from being natural realities, they are solely and simply
formed as matters of convenience, so that their limits are absolutely
dependent upon individual or collective opinion.
Consequently, when we hear it said—as we may—that such and such an animal
_must_ constitute a genus by itself, we may be assured that in nine cases
out of ten the speaker is talking nonsense. It _may_ do so, but this is
purely as a matter of convenience for purposes of classification. As
examples of Flower’s broad and far-seeing way of looking at the limits
of generic groups, we may take his inclusion of the foxes in the same
group as the wolves, of the polecats and weasels with the martens, of
the two-horned with the one-horned rhinoceroses, and of the blackbirds
with the thrushes; and yet in all these instances, as in many others, a
large number of his successors—many of whom cannot lay claim to anything
approaching his intellectual capacity and his power of separating
essentials from trivialities—cannot be content with the grand simplicity
of his scheme of classification. What they gain by their involved systems
and minute subdivisions is best known to themselves—to the public such
complexity tends to render zoology, which ought to be one of the most
attractive and delightful of all sciences (and it was one of Flower’s
endeavours to make it as much so as possible), repulsive and distasteful.
The present writer’s opportunities of intercourse with Professor Flower
during his tenure of the Conservatorship of the Museum of the College
of Surgeons were but few and intermittent, and restricted to the latter
part of that time, he may therefore be pardoned for quoting from a
biographer who appears to have enjoyed more favourable opportunities in
this respect. Before doing so, however, the writer cannot refrain from
putting it on record that his own appointment to the Geological Survey
of India in the early seventies was largely due to the influence of
Professor Flower, who had been his examiner in the Natural Science Tripos
at Cambridge, in December 1871.
To revert to the subject of Flower’s personality in connection with his
appointment in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, his biographer in the “Year-Book” of
the Royal Society for 1901 writes as follows:—
“His tenure of office, viz., twenty-two years, as Conservator of the
museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, was a splendid record of
original and laborious work, of great administrative capacity, and of
unvarying courtesy to visitors. The museum was most popular under his
management. There, amidst the almost unrivalled collections, the tall,
fair-haired, and earnest worker was daily to be found, minutely studying,
comparing and measuring, or giving directions for the extension,
arrangement, and classification of the varied and valuable contents. From
a scientific point of view no post could have been better adapted to the
man or the man to the post. With many and varied lines of study lying
conveniently around him, in the quietude of an office less conspicuous
and exacting than the British Museum, in the full vigour of manhood, and
in the midst of sympathetic seniors, friends, and assistants, it can well
be imagined that Sir William’s powers attained great development, and
that perhaps he never felt so full of happiness and satisfaction with his
original work. It could not well be otherwise. His conscientious devotion
to duty, his remarkable skill in devising methods of mounting, his
artistic eye, his tact with subordinates, and the esteem in which he was
held by zoologists and comparative anatomists at home and abroad, give a
clue to his subsequent career, and show the training of one of the most
accomplished and courtly comparative anatomists our country has produced.”
But there was another side to Flower’s work during the greater part of
his official connection with the Royal College of Surgeons, and one which
brought him into wider and closer contact with the public than was the
case with his Conservatorship. This was the delivery of the lectures
which form the chief, if not the sole, duty of the Hunterian Professor.
According to the statutes of the College, the annual course of lectures,
which is short, must be on a different subject each year, but must in all
cases be illustrated by preparations in the museum.
The present writer was privileged to attend only one of these courses—on
the general structure of the Mammalia—and is therefore not competent
to speak from experience of these lectures as a whole. Nevertheless
the one course was amply sufficient to convince him of the lecturer’s
special qualifications for his task. Flower was indeed an ideal lecturer,
endowed with a fine presence, a suave and yet penetrating voice, great
power of expression, a slow and impressive delivery, and, above all,
an absolute mastery of his subject (whatever it might be) down to the
minutest and apparently most insignificant details. For him, every detail
of structure, whether functional or rudimentary, had a significance
and a meaning, and he would never rest satisfied till he had found out
what that meaning was, and had laid the whole of the evidence on which
he based his conclusions before his audience. That audience, which
generally included a considerable number of the elder members of the
medical profession, as well as many well-known zoologists and anatomists,
invariably listened with rapt attention to the story told so admirably by
the accomplished lecturer.
Of these lectures, the first course, delivered in 1870 on the Osteology
of the Mammalia, is perhaps the one which has rendered Flower most widely
known among zoological students, since, as noticed below, it became the
basis of a valuable little volume.
His introductory lecture in February 1870 was largely devoted to the
subject of plan, or “type,” in Nature, and to the evidence in favour of
the transmutation of species and evolution of organised beings—a doctrine
which was at that time by no means so widely accepted, even among
scientific men, as it is at the present day. In this address the lecturer
prefaced his remarks by explaining that since the main part of his
anatomical knowledge was derived from the splendid series of specimens
and preparations in the museum under his charge, so he intended to act
as the mouth-piece of the specimens themselves. After this introductory
lecture followed the regular course for the year, which was devoted to
the Osteology of the Mammalia, and it is perhaps this series which has
rendered the name of Flower most familiar to the ordinary students of
scientific zoology and comparative anatomy, since it was published during
the same year as a volume in Macmillan’s _Manuals for Students_, under
the title of _An Introduction to the Osteology of the Mammalia: being
the Substance of a Course of Lectures delivered at the Royal College
of Surgeons of England_. Such was the success of this admirable little
volume—which has ever since formed the recognised text-book on the
subject of which it treats, that a second edition was called for in 1876,
and a third in 1885. In expanding and revising the latter—in which, by
the way, the second half of the original title was dropped—the author,
owing to the pressure of official duties, called in the assistance of Dr.
J. G. Garson, of Cambridge, a well-known zoologist and anatomist.
This book, to be properly appreciated, should be studied in connection
with the series of homologous bones of different species of mammals
arranged by Flower himself in the museum of the College of Surgeons,
to which reference has been made in an earlier part of this chapter,
and from which most of the illustrations were drawn. The figures of the
dog’s skull have been reproduced in a large number of zoological and
anatomical works. The plan followed in this volume forms an admirable
model for all works of a kindred nature. In the first chapter the author
discusses the classification of the mammalia; in the second he describes
the skeleton of that group as a whole; while in the remainder the
modifications presented by the various bones in the different groups are
described in considerable detail. A special feature is the sparing use
of technical terms, and the careful explanation of the meaning of those
of which the use was unavoidable. Besides being carefully revised and
brought up to date, the third edition differed from its predecessors by
including a table of the number of vertebræ found in a large series of
species.
In the following year (1871) the Hunterian course, which comprised
no less than eighteen lectures, was devoted to the functions and
modifications of the teeth of mammals, from man to the monotremes,
although it was not known at that time that either of the two generic
representatives of the latter group really possessed true teeth, the
discovery of these organs in the Australian duckbill not having been made
till many years later.
Among other subjects included in his Hunterian lectures was the anatomy
and affinities of the Cetacea, or whales and dolphins, a group of mammals
in which Flower almost from the first displayed a marked and special
interest, and on which he became one of the first authorities. Since,
however, this is a subject to which fuller reference is made in a later
chapter, it need not be further discussed in this place.
In 1872 Flower’s Hunterian lectures were devoted to the subject of
the digestive organs of mammals; these lectures being reported, with
illustrations, in the _Medical Times and Gazette_ of the same year.
Perhaps the most important and certainly the most voluminous of these
lectures was the series on the “Comparative Anatomy of Man,” which
extended over several years, the course for 1880 dealing especially
with the skulls of the Fiji, Tongan, and Samoan islanders. The subject
of anthropology, or the study of the different races of mankind from a
zoological standpoint, shared indeed with that of the Cetacea a large
part of the Professor’s attention, and the two together formed, perhaps,
his favourite lines of investigation. In regard to the problems presented
by the human race when viewed from this standpoint, Flower has expressed
himself as follows:—
“Comparative anatomy is specially occupied in studying the differences
between one man and another, estimating and classifying their
differences, and especially discriminating between such differences as
are only individual variations (variations which, when extreme, are
relegated to the department of the teratologist) and those that are
inherited, and so become characters of different groups and races of
the human species. Physical anthropology, moreover, extends its range
beyond merely comparing and registering these differences of structure.
It also occupies itself with endeavouring to trace their cause, and the
circumstances which may occasion their modifications. It endeavours also
to form a classification of the different groups of mankind, and so to
throw light upon the history and development of the human species.”
The races towards which special attention was directed in these lectures
were mainly those inhabiting the islands of the Indian Ocean and the
Pacific, namely, the diminutive and degraded Andamanese, the Australians,
and their near but very distinct neighbours, the Tasmanians, long since
extinct, the Melanesians or Oceanic Negroes, and the Polynesians. With
the exception of the latter, which the Professor regarded as an aberrant
and somewhat mixed modification of the Malay stock, all these different
island races were considered to belong to the black or negroid branch
of the human species; and it was suggested that the Andamanese were
the purest living representatives of a great “Negrito” stock, which
had been formerly widely distributed, and had given rise to the true
African negroes on the one hand, and to the Oceanic negroes on the
other. As regards his view that the aboriginal Australians are members
of the negroid branch, it will be pointed out in a later chapter that an
alternative opinion has of late years gained considerable favour among
anthropologists.
The Hunterian lectures of Flower were, however, by no means restricted
to the negro-like races of the islands of the southern oceans. On the
contrary, the Professor devoted much attention in the course of the
series to the various races to be met with in our Indian dependencies,
dwelling especially on the so-called Dravidian (_i.e._ non-Aryan) tribes
of the Nilgiris and other districts of southern India, and likewise on
the still more remarkable and primitive Veddas of Ceylon. The Mongols,
as typified by the Tatars and Chinese, and their relationship on the one
hand to the Eskimo, and thus with the “Indians” of America, and on the
other with the Malays, were also discussed at considerable length in
these lectures.
The origin of the Egyptians was also a subject to which much attention
was devoted by the Hunterian Professor. “The much vexed questions,” he
said, “who were the Egyptians? and where did they come from? receive no
answer from anatomical investigations, beyond the very simple one that
they are one of several races which inhabit all the lands surrounding the
Mediterranean Sea; that they there lived in their own land far beyond
all periods of time measured by historical events, and that in all
probability it was there that they gradually developed that marvellous
civilisation which has exercised such a powerful influence over the arts,
the sciences, and the religion of the whole western world.” The truth of
these suggestions has been fully confirmed by the subsequent researches
of Professor Flinders Petrie.
As a whole, these Hunterian lectures on anthropological subjects were
a great success, and won for the Professor increased respect and
admiration from scientific men of all classes. They paved the way for the
preparation of that invaluable Catalogue of the anthropological specimens
in the museum of the College to which allusion has already been made.
When in 1884 Professor Flower, on the resignation of Sir Richard Owen,
accepted the Directorship of the Natural History Departments of the
British Museum, and was thus compelled to sever his official connection
with the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, after a service of
two-and-twenty years, the following resolution, on the motion of Sir
James Paget, seconded by Mr. Erichsen, was unanimously passed by the
Council of the College:—
“That the Council hereby desire to express to Mr. William Henry Flower
their deep regret at his resignation of the office of Conservator. That
they thank him for the admirable care, judgment and zeal, with which for
twenty-two years he has fulfilled the various and responsible duties
of those offices. That they are glad to acknowledge that the great
increase of the museum during those years has been very largely due to
his exertions, and to the influence which he has exercised, not only on
all who have worked with him, but amongst all who have been desirous to
promote the progress of Anatomical Science. That they know that while
he has increased the value and utility of the museum by enlarging it,
by preserving it in perfect order, and by facilitating the study of
its contents, he has also maintained the scientific reputation of the
College, by the numerous works which have gained for him a distinguished
position amongst the naturalists and biologists of the present time. And
that, in their placing on record their high appreciation of Mr. Flower,
the Council feel sure that they are expressing the opinion of all the
Fellows and Members of the College, and that they all will unite with
them in wishing him complete success and happiness in the important
office to which he has been elected.”
This is indeed a splendid, although by no means exaggerated, testimonial
to the success of Flower’s administration of the Museum of the College
of Surgeons, and to the good and lasting work he there effected—work
which paved the way to the improvements he was subsequently able to
effect in the Natural History Museum.
_Note._—On Owen’s retirement the post of Superintendent of the
Natural History Departments of the British Museum, which he had
filled, was merged into the new office of Director; a wider
scope being given to the duties of the post.