rare and curious bird are procured, the heads
of a few should be taken off and preserved in
spirit." " When alligators and crocodiles are
too large to be preserved whole, secure some
part. The bones of such things are especially
desirable. Secure also the eggs in different
stages." "Snakes may be preserved whole,
or in part, especially the heads, for the examination
of their teeth and fangs." " Eyes of
fishes are proper objects of preservation."
Such are a few of the hints sent forth to their
medical disciples by the College, and the
fruits of the system are a bountiful supply.
Never a week passes but something rare or
curious makes its appearance in Lincoln's Inn
Fields; sometimes from one quarter, sometimes
from another, but there is always something
coming, either by messenger or parcel-cart.
Apart from these foreign sources, there
are other coutributaries to the general stock.
Country doctors and hospital surgeons, from
time to time, send in their quota; the
Zoological Society likewise contribute all
their dead animals. When the elephant died
at the Regent's Park Gardens, a College student
and an assistant were busily occupied for
days dissecting the huge animal. When the
rhinoceros expired at the same place, a portion
of its viscera was hailed as a prize; and
when the whale was cast, not long ago, upon
the shores of the Thames, the watermen who
claimed it as their booty, steamed off to the
College to find a customer for portions of the unwieldy
monster; nor were they disappointed.
Beyond all these, there still remains another
searcher out of materials for the scalpel
and the microscope. He is a character
in his way. By trade, half
cattle-slaughterer
half-oysterman, he is by choice a sort of
dilettante anatomist. One day he is killing
oxen and sheep in Clare Market, and the next
is scouring the same market for morbid specimens
"for Mr. Quickett, at the College." He
knows an unhealthy sheep by its looks, and
watches its post mortem with the eye of a
savant. Many a choice specimen has he
caught up in his time from amongst the offal
and garbage of that fustiest of markets in the
fustiest of neighbourhoods. Indeed, through
him, all that is unusual in ox, calf, sheep, fish,
or fowl, found within the confines of Clare
Market, finds its way to the " work shop " of
the College to be investigated by scalpel and
microscope. When a butcher is known to
have any diseased sheep, our collector hovers
about his slaughter-house, and that which is
bad food for the public, often affords him and
his patron a prize. He is a sort of jackal for
the anatomists—a kind of cadger hi the service
of science—a veritable snatcher-up of ill-conditioned
trifles.

Returning to the room in the College roof,
where the general cornucopia of strange
things is emptied, we find its presiding genius
in Mr. Quekett, a quiet enthusiast in his way,
who goes on from month to month and year
to year, watching, working, and chronicling
such facts as can be made out. When a
novelty comes in, it is examined, described,
investigated by the miscroscope; and, if
worthy, is sketched on stone for printing. It
is then catalogued, and placed in spirit for
preservation—minute portions, perhaps, being-
mounted on glass as objects for the microscope.
Thus disposed of, it becomes a " store
propagation." From this store the lectures
at the College are illustrated by examples;
and from it also are the bright bottles in the
Hunterian Museum kept complete. From
time to time something very rare comes to
hand, and then there is quite an excitement
in the place. It is turned about, examined,
and discussed, with as much zest as a lady
would display when first opening a present
of jewels, or first criticising a new ball-dress.
If the new acquisition be an animal but
recently dead, a drop of its blood is sought
and placed under the microscope to see the
diameter of its globules; if it has a coat of fur,
perhaps one of the hairs are next submitted
to the same test; and then a fine section of
its bone passes a similar ordeal. Its brain is
investigated, weighed, and placed in spirit
for preservation. Its general characteristics
are then gone over, and a description of them
written down. If worthy of a place in the
Museum, this description goes to make a
paragraph in the catalogues of the Collection
—fine quarto volumes, of which there are
many now complete, containing more exact
anatomical and physiological descriptions of
objects, than perhaps any other work extant.

The last contribution to the series of Catalogues
was made in the room we have been
examining. Its production was the constant
labour of two years; and the volume contains
exact particulars of many facts never before
noticed. Amongst other things, for instance,
made out with certainty in this place by Mr.
Quekett, after months of patient investigtion,
was the elementary differences in the
character of bone. To the common eye and
common idea, all bone is simply bone; and
for common purposes the word indicates
closely enough what the speaker would describe.
Not so to the naturalist and the
physiologist; and so scalpel and microscope
went to work: the sea, the laud, and the air,
lent each their creatures peculiar to itself,
and the labour of the search was at length
rewarded by a discovery that each great class
of living things has an elementary difference
in the bones upon which its structure is built
up. Hence, when a particle of bony matter is
now placed under the microscope, come whence
it may—from a geological strata, or from the
depths of the sea, or from within the cerecloth
of a mummy the observer, guided by
Mr. Quekett's observations, knows whether
it belonged in life to bird, beast, or fish.

Glancing round this anatomical workshop,
we find, amongst other things, some preparations
showing the nature of pearls. Examine
them, and we find that there are dark and