During a portion of his tenure of office as Conservator of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, and throughout the whole of his Directorship of the Natural History Museum, Sir William Flower occupied the Presidential Chair of the Zoological Society of London—the oldest body of its kind in existence. The events narrated in the present chapter occurred therefore during the period covered by its two immediate predecessors; nevertheless, this method of treatment, although breaking the chronological order, has been found, on the whole, the most convenient. The Zoological Society, it may be observed, has been in the habit of selecting its presidents from three distinct classes. As in the case of the late Prince Consort, the president may be a personage of exalted rank without any claim to a special knowledge of zoology. On the other hand, as exemplified by the Earl of Derby, who filled the office in the “fifties,” the Marquis of Tweeddale in the “seventies,” and the Duke of Bedford at the present time, he may combine high rank with a more or less pronounced taste for and knowledge of natural history, or, finally, as in the case of the founder, Sir Stamford Raffles, he may be selected solely for his eminence as a zoologist or as a lover of animals. On the death of the Marquis of Tweeddale, 29th December 1878, Professor Flower was selected by the Council to fill the presidential chair; the appointment being duly ratified at the Annual Meeting of the Society held the following spring. From that date till the year of his death, Flower was annually re-elected president by the unanimous vote of the meeting. He made an admirable president, his deliberate mode of speaking being specially well adapted to the comments expected from a scientific man occupying the presidential chair at the scientific meetings. From his wide knowledge of zoology, anatomy, and palæontology, he was able to speak to the point on almost all the papers read at the Society’s meetings; and those privileged to listen to his remarks on any specimen in which he was specially interested will not readily forget the impressive manner in which he brought its more salient and characteristic features to the notice of his hearers. Many of his more important scientific memoirs communicated to the Society had been published in its _Proceedings_ or _Transactions_, before he accepted the presidential chair, in days when the calls on his time were not so pressing or so numerous as they afterwards became; but even after his elevation to the presidency several valuable memoirs were received from him, the most important being, perhaps, one on the classification and affinities of the dolphins, to which fuller reference is made in another chapter.