to accept—that the remains of extinct animals are only in their proper place when side by side with those still living on the earth. ‘His collection of fossils,’ says Owen in one of his prefaces, ‘was the largest and most select of any in this country.’ To contain this collection Hunter had built a special museum in Castle Street, Leicester Square, which was open to public inspection on certain days. After his death his executors, in accordance with his will, offered the collection to the Government. ‘Buy preparations?’ exclaimed Mr Pitt; ‘why, I have not money enough for gunpowder!’ Ultimately, however, the House of Commons agreed to give £15,000 for it, just one-fifth of the sum that Hunter is said to have spent upon it. Next arose the further question, who should take care of it. The Royal Society, it is said, did not consider it ‘an object of importance to the general study of natural history’; the British Museum was literary, not scientific; and finally, in 1799, the Corporation of Surgeons, as it was then called, accepted it, under the condition that a proper catalogue should be made, a conservator appointed, and twenty-four lectures in explanation of it delivered annually in the college. Soon afterwards the Corporation of Surgeons became the Royal College of Surgeons, and a building, to which Parliament contributed £27,500, was built for its reception. This was opened in 1813. When Owen was appointed assistant-conservator of these collections thirty-four years had elapsed since Hunter’s death. During that time they had been preserved from damage by the devoted care of Mr William Clift, who, after being Hunter’s assistant for a short time, had been appointed conservator, first by the executors, and subsequently by the college. The general arrangement had been prescribed by Hunter, but no descriptive catalogue existed, as it had been, unfortunately, Hunter’s habit to trust to his memory for the history of his specimens. Further, though lists, more or less imperfect, drawn up either by Hunter himself or under his direction, had been preserved, the bulk of his papers had been destroyed by Sir Everard Home, his brother-in-law and executor. ‘There is but one thing more to be done—to destroy the collection,’ was Clift’s remark when he heard of this act of cynical wickedness. In the scarcity, therefore, of documentary evidence, other expedients had to be resorted to for the identification of the specimens which Hunter had dissected, or had preserved entire in spirit. As Owen remarks in the preface to the first volume of his descriptive catalogue (published in 1833), ‘It was necessary to consult the book of Nature.’ At first it was no easy matter to procure the animals required; but after the establishment of the Zoological Society this difficulty was in a great measure removed, and more than two hundred dissections were made by Owen in the course of the work incident to the preparation of the first volume of the catalogue.