their structure, and recording them, Hunter caused most elaborate and accurate drawings to be made from recent dissections of many animals, and for this purpose retained in his family for many years an accomplished draughtsman.
But Hunter’s object was not only to dissect, ob- serve, detail, and exhibit a mass of detached facts in anatomy; he had far higher aims than that of a mere collector of facts, even in comparative anatomy; and his feelings on this point were sufficiently ex- pressed when, in reply to an invitation on the part of Sir John Pringle to collect all his dissections of the turtle, and send them to the Royal Society, he stated “ that the publication of the description of a single animal, more especially of a common one, had never been his wish.”
Mr. Hunter was not merely in possession of nume- rous and precise facts in anatomy : he approximated them—he compared them together, and, by his su- perior genius, arranged them in the true order to be followed in comparative anatomy—that of organs; for, as it has been well observed, if species is the object of comparison in zoology, organ is evidently that in anatomy, each having its peculiar function, its dis- tinct office, its special and determinate laws. Of the successful manner ia which Hunter disentangled _and unfolded these organs, tracing them from one species of animal to another, and exhibiting their modifications, his Museum is the faithful record ; and his labours in this respect must assuredly be re- garded as the first great attempt to arrange in sys- tematic order the detached facts of comparative ana-
