ip, backed by a
store of living knowledge; so well organized that it could respond
at once to any suggestion which would throw light on undiscovered
affinities and provide a true base for classification.

While much of his bookwork and writing was done at home, his later
anatomical work was done at his laboratory. As official engagements
multiplied, his time was much broken into; but he snatched every
available moment, often dashing down to South Kensington in a cab for
a half-hour of work between two official meetings. His absorption
in his studies was intense--as at one time he signs himself to his
fellow-worker, W. K. Parker, "Ever yours amphibially," so Jeffery
Parker, his demonstrator, who tells the story, came to him with a
question about the brain of the codfish at a time when he was deep in
the investigation of some invertebrate group. "Codfish?" he replied;
"that's a vertebrate, isn't it? Ask me a fortnight hence, and I'll
consider it."

One more note concerning his method of work. His love of visualizing
his problems regularly led him to make charts to show geographically,
say, the distribution of certain forms of life over the globe, or to
illustrate points of history--such, for example, as a coloured map
of the Aegean, with fifty-mile circles drawn from the centre of the
Cyclades to illustrate the range of Greek civilization as it spread
over the shores of Asia and Europe. And as in writing a book he was
careful first to plan out the scheme of it and the balance of the
parts, so, however much his public addresses gave the impression of
being largely impromptu, he had always thought out carefully every
word he meant to say. "There is," he said, "no greater danger than
the so-called _inspiration of the moment_, which leads you to say
something which is not exactly true, or which you would regret
afterwards."

Yet his was not a strong verbal memory. It was essentially a memory
for facts; he could tear the heart out of a book as swiftly as a
Macaulay, packing the facts into the framework of his knowledge,
and always knowing thereafter where to find his facts or verify his
references. In his speeches it was the compelling thought seeking
expression, and fitting the form of expression exactly to the form
of the thought, that brought the meditated words so infallibly and so
spontaneously to his lips: they were already welded together in mind.
But he had not that kind of memory which, after once reading a page