Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 65.djvu/386

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382
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford. Flower's family life with his seven children was particularly happy. At the age of thirty he gave up the practise of surgery to become conservator of the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. Here he remained for twenty-two years until in 1884 he succeeded Owen as director of the Natural History Branch of the British Museum whose new building in South Kensington had been opened two years before. This position Flower held until his health failed in 1898.

During these years Flower published volumes on the osteology of the mammalia and on other subjects and a great number of special papers on comparative anatomy and zoology, on anthropology and on museum administration. Only three years after the publication of the 'Origin of Species' he arranged the collections of the Hunterian Museum to illustrate and as it were make tangible the doctrines of evolution. One of the steps in this direction consisted in obliterating the demarkation between recent and extinct forms. In many ways Flower made improvements in museum methods which have been followed everywhere. He had wide interests and filled many positions of trust and honor. Thus he was president of the Zoological Society of London from 1879 until his death in 1899.

The Whin Sill, Teesdale.

GEOLOGICAL PHOTOGRAPHS.

Mr. Osmund W. Jeffs, in 1889, advocated the formation of a collection of geological photographs, and the committee of the British Association with this object in view was formed the following year. Mr. Jeffs acted as secretary of the committee until 1896, when he was succeeded by Professor W. W. Watts, and work has been carried forward actively, the number of photographs numbering 3,754 in 190:3. in 1899 plans were made for the publication of a series of platinotype prints and lantern slides to be distributed to subscribers, and three issues containing seventy-two photographs have been issued. These photographs are accompanied by descriptions by well known geologists and are of much scientific and educational value. We reproduce here two of the photographs.