delight. He was then engaged in determining, by experiment, whether digestion continues in lizards and snakes during their torpid state; and he made other experiments on the faculty of hearing in fishes, the organ of which sense he had discovered in these animals before leaving London. At this period, too, were made those observations on gun- shot wounds, with which seems to have originated that inquiry which, in its published form, only ap- peared 30 years afterwards. And in an incidental remark in his paper on the vesicule seminales, “that he tock the opportunity of opening a man immediately after he had been killed by a cannon- ball, to be more certain of the nature of their con- tents,” we perceive how strong was his physiological zeal, and how eagerly he seized every opportunity of adding to his knowledge.
There is reason to suppose, that when he returned to London, in 1763, the scheme of his future life and occupations had been already formed. The College possesses a manuscript catalogue in his own hand-writing, apparently written a few months after his return from Portugal, briefly defining the nature of about 200 specimens of natural and morbid struc- ture, grouped together according to organs—the germ of that Museum in which he sought to dis- play all the types and modifications of animal structure.
The great object of Mr. Hunter in the formation of his Museum, was the illustration of life,—in its natural and diseased condition, in plants as well as in animals. Physiology, in its largest sense, was the
