When, in 1862, he was appointed to the Hunterian Professorship at the College of Surgeons, he took for the subject of several yearly courses of lectures the anatomy of the vertebrata, beginning with the primates, and as the subject was then rather new to him, and as it was a rule with him never to make a statement in a lecture which was not founded upon his own actual observation, he set to work to make a series of original dissections of all the forms he treated of.  These were carried on in the workroom at the top of the college, and mostly in the evenings, after his daily occupation at Jermyn Street (the School of Mines, as it was then called) was over, an arrangement which my residence in the college buildings enabled me to make for him.  These rooms contained a large store of material, entire or partially dissected animals preserved in spirit, which, unlike those mounted in the museum, were available for further investigation in any direction, and these, supplemented occasionally by fresh subjects from the Zoological Gardens, formed the foundation of the lectures...On these evenings it was always my privilege to be with him, and to assist in the work in which he was engaged.  In dissecting, as in everything else, he was a very rapid worker, going straight to the point he wished to ascertain with a firm and steady hand, never diverted into side issues, nor wasting any time in unnecessary polishing up for the sake of appearances; the very opposite, in fact, to what is commonly known as “finikin.”  His great facility for bold and dashing sketching came in most usefully in this work, the notes he made being largely helped out with illustrations.

The following is the letter in which he makes himself known to Professor Haeckel of Jena, who, in his thanks for the specimens, bewails the lot of “us poor inland Germans, who have to get help from England.”]

The Royal School of Mines, Jermyn Street, October 28, 1862.

Sir,

A copy of your exceedingly valuable and beautiful monograph, “Die Radiolarien,” came into my hands two or three days ago, and I have been devoting the little leisure I possess just at present to a careful study of its contents, which are to me profoundly interesting and instructive.

Permit me to say this much by way of introduction to a request which I have to prefer, which is, that you will be good enough to let me have a copy of your Habitationsschrift, “De Rhizopodum Finibus,” if you have one to spare.  If it is sent through Frommans of Jena to the care of Messrs. Williams and Norgate, London, it will reach me safely.

I observe that in your preface you state that you have no specimen of the famous Barbadoes deposit.  As I happen to possess some from Schomburgk’s own collection, I should be ashamed to allow you any longer to suffer from that want, and I beg your acceptance of the inclosed little packet.  If this is not sufficient, pray let me know and I will send you as much more.