himself within the limits of science, utility, or prudence. And if one would justify an extravagant love of collecting, silly as it often is, the example of Hunter might be urged. It led him to constantly larger ranges of enquiry; it was among the motives of his widest and deepest studies, and it incited the industry and skill with which he gathered the great stores of facts which are treasured in this College. A century of study has not exhausted all the truths that are contained in his collections; and gathered round them, as if by the attraction of a central force, is the museum of the College, now more than twice as large as the Hunterian, and forming with it the very thing that Hunter longed for-the best anatomical museum in the world; the most perfect in order and condition; the largest treasury of visible biological facts.

One more motive of Hunter's scientific life must be told. He was a master in all the arts of anatomy; very skilful in dissecting, injecting, and all known methods of displaying specimens. I suspect that his first success in life was in his first dissection; and it is said that he was so fond of his art that it was among the motives which led him beyond the study of human anatomy into that of comparative anatomy, which, till his time, had hardly been studied in this country.1

These, I believe, were the special motives of Hunter's scientific life; and they deserve study, for his life was given to science as entirely and as purely as that of any

man.

Doubtless we may discern in him how, sometimes, other motives added to these their various force. But 1 Norris, Hunterian Oration, 1817, p. 49, and Oitley's Life of Hunter, p. 7.

they were casual and wholly subordinate.1 They were far outweighed by the always growing power of those motives of his life which I have described and, chiefly, by the desire of happiness in intellectual exercise. This desire increased with indulgence, with contest against difficulties, with the view of constantly new objects, and with the encouragement of success. He filled himself with knowledge, and, and, through knowledge, became an ardent lover of nature. I say, through knowledge: for Nature, in her manifold perfections, inspires many kinds of love; and Hunter's was almost wholly intellectual. He had none of the love that moves the poet, the idealist, or the theologian: for, in truth, neither poetry, nor idealism, nor theology ever coloured the simplicity of his scientific mind. He had the social love of nature; he was a warm-hearted man, loved dogs and horses, and sometimes writes of the living things about him as if they were companions. But his chief love was for the charms of truth that lie hidden beneath the appearances, the veils, of nature; and his love was enhanced when search revealed the utility of all he saw-the perfection of the adjustment of everything to its use; the evidence of purpose fulfilled in every change; the evidence of grandeur in a world of infinitely various forms held steadfast by few laws.

In all these he found delight and motive for fresh study; and I cannot doubt that he attained that highest achievement and satisfaction of the intellect when it can rest in a loving contemplation of the truth; loving it not only because it is right, but because it is beautiful.

1 See Note D.

I

cannot doubt that in the contemplation of the order and mutual fitness in a great field of scientific truth there may be, to some high intellects, a source of pure delight such as are the sensuous beauties of nature to the cultivated artist-mind, or virtue to the enlightened conscience. I believe that in contemplation such as this Hunter enjoyed a calm, pure happiness. So Reynolds, his friend, seems to tell of him. In that masterpiece of portraiture, which teaches like a chapter of biography, Hunter is not shown as the busy anatomist or experimenter pursuing objective facts; the chief records of his work are in the background; he is at rest and looking out, but as one who is looking far beyond and away from things visible into a world of truth and law which can be only intellectually discerned. The clear vision of that world was his reward. It may be the reward of all who will live the scientific life with the same devotion and simplicity.

Let me speak now of the chief characters and the method of Hunter's work, and thus try to indicate the character of his mind.

That which first and always strikes one is the vast quantity of work he did. It is told of him by one pupil that he rose regularly at the dawn of day, and never ceased from his labours till the night was far advanced;' by others, that he allowed himself only five hours for sleep; by another, that when he gave him a letter of introduction he was asked to call at five the next morning, and found him already at work in his museum.

Such as these were Hunter's habits during at least the last thirty years of his life; and it was not in busy

idleness that he spent this time. Counted in mere quantity, very few have left so large results of scientific labour as he did. Besides the four published volumes of his works, he left a vast number of manuscripts written or dictated by himself. He dissected more than 500 species of animals, and of some of these many different examples. Of these dissections he left descriptions of more than 300; and besides these were all his studies of human anatomy, and the dissections of hundreds, or even of thousands, of diseased structures. His museum contained nearly 14,000 specimens, and all these he had either prepared or at least personally and closely studied. Nearly the whole of this work was done in thirty years: during all that time he was active in the practice of surgery; and as he grew older he only worked the more. His latest letters are more than ever full and urgent to his friends to send him everything from which he could gather knowledge-not merely things rare or wonderful, but whatever could be studied, whatever could yield facts for clearing or enlarging his view of life.1

Even his amusements, as he calls them, were what idle men would call hard work. I amuse myself,' he says, 'with bees;' and the results are told in essays which one of the best recent writers calls almost faultless.' 2 They are full of minute observations and of careful and ingenious experiment and thought; they show that habit of his mind in which it always watched small things, as if they might indicate great laws; they might alone have gained for him a good scientific reputation.

1 See Note E.

2 E. L. Ormerod, Natural History of Wasps, p. 7.

Or, in evidence of the quantity of work that he would devote to one investigation, hear what he says of his observations on the development of the young bird within the egg. For the purpose of observing it better than he could, though he made many trials, in the eggs of chickens, he says: I kept a flock of geese for more than fifteen years, and by depriving them of their first brood in my investigations, they commonly bred again the same season.' And: As hours make a difference in the first days, it becomes necessary to examine in the night as well as in the day, by which reason the latter brood in the summer is best adapted, having then short nights.'1

Surely one might suppose that this was the great work of his life; this hourly occupation by day and night for parts of fifteen years. Yet it seems to have been rather a casual by-the-way pursuit. He became, indeed, so charmed with the study of the birds in eggs young that he says: It would almost appear that this mode of propagation was intended for investigation;' and yet, though he attained knowledge far in advance of all before or with him, he did not publish it, and the extent of his researches was not nearly known till long after his death.

The range of Hunter's work matched with its quantity and the time devoted to it. Never before or since-I think I am safe in saying this-never before or since has any man been at one time a thorough student and investigator in so wide a field of science. He was an enthusiastic naturalist; as a comparative anatomist and 1 Essays and Observations, vol. i. p. 206, and Note E.