Mention has already been made of the fact that in an early stage of his career Sir William became an M.B. of London, and that later on he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons. In addition to these professional qualifications, he was also the recipient of honorary degrees from the two elder Universities. Thus in 1891 he was made a D.C.L. of Oxford, the public orator of the University, when the degree was conferred, acclaiming him as a living proof of the truth of the old saying, ἀρχή ἄνδρα δειξει, attributed to one of the seven wise men of Greece, and as a man who had passed with increasing distinction from one important official post to another; and he was likewise a D.Sc. of Cambridge. But this by no means exhausts the list of his academic honours, Edinburgh, St. Andrews, and Trinity College, Dublin, claiming him on their roll of honorary LL.D.’s, while in 1889 he received from Durham the degree of D.C.L. The Edinburgh degree, it may be mentioned, was conferred on the occasion of the celebration of the tercentenary of the University. Sir William was also a Ph.D. Nor were Flower’s conspicuous services to zoological science suffered to remain unrecognised by the Government of his country, for he was created a C.B. in 1887, three years after his first appointment to the British Museum, and five years later (1892) followed the higher distinction of the K.C.B. But this does not exhaust the list of official honours, for in 1887 Sir William received from Her Majesty, the late Queen Victoria, the Jubilee Medal. Had he lived to the date of its foundation, it is possible that Flower might have been admitted by his Sovereign as one of the original members of the Order of Merit. From His Majesty the German Emperor Sir William Flower received the distinction of the Royal Prussian order, “Pour la Mérite,” an honour of which he was justly very proud. As a distinguished friend pointed out in his letter of congratulation on learning of the new distinction, “it is the one European decoration which an Englishman may be proud to wear, and bestowed, as I believe it to be, with the sanction of the very few who have already got it. It is the one order which real work, apart from rank and wealth and courtiers’ trick, alone can win.” As another eminent friend described it on the same occasion, it is truly “the blue riband of literary and scientific decorations.”