Chapter 16

Hunter was of about medium height, strongly built and high-shouldered and short-necked. He had an open countenance, and large features, eyes light-blue or grey, eyebrows prominent, and hair reddish-yellow in youth, later white, and worn curled behind; and he dressed plainly and neatly. He rose at or before six, dissected till nine (his breakfast hour), received patients from half-past nine till twelve, at least during the latter part of his life, and saw his outdoor and hospital patients till about four, when he dined, taking, according to Home, as at other meals in the twenty years preceding his death, no wine. After dinner he slept an hour; he then superintended experiments, read or prepared his lectures, and made, usually by means of an amanuensis, records of the day’s dissections. “I never could understand,” says W. Clift, “how Mr Hunter obtained rest: when I left him at midnight, it was with a lamp fresh trimmed for further study, and with the usual appointment to meet him again at six in the morning.” H. Leigh Thomas records27that, on his first arrival in London, having by desire called on Hunter at five o’clock in the morning, he found him already busily engaged in the dissection of insects. Rigidly economical of time, Hunter was always at work, and he had always in view some fresh enterprise. To his museum he gave a very large share of his attention, being fearful lest the ordering of it should be incomplete at his death, and knowing of none who could continue his work for him. “When I am dead,” said he one day to Dr Maxwell Garthshore, “you will not soon meet with another John Hunter.” At the time of his death he had anatomized over 500 different species of animals, some of them repeatedly, and had made numerous dissections of plants. The manuscript works by him, appropriated and destroyed by Home, among which were his eighty-six surgical lectures, all in full, are stated to have been “literally a cartload”; and many pages of his records were written by Clift under his directions “at least half adozen times over, with corrections and transpositions almost without end.”To the kindness of his disposition, his fondness for animals, his aversion to operations, his thoughtful and self-sacrificing attention to his patients, and especially his zeal to help forward struggling practitioners and others in any want abundantly testify. Pecuniary means he valued no further than they enabled him to promote his researches; and to the poor, to non-beneficed clergymen, professional authors and artists his services were rendered without remuneration. His yearly income in 1763-1774 was never £1000; it exceeded that sum in 1778, for several years before his death was £5000, and at the time of that event had reached above £6000. All his earnings not required for domestic expenses were, during the last ten years of his life, devoted to the improvement of his museum; and his property, this excepted, was found on his decease to be barely sufficient to pay his debts. By his contemporaries generally Hunter was respected as a master of the art and science of anatomy, and as a cautious and trustworthy if not an elegant or very dexterous operator. Few, however, perceived the drift of his biological researches. Although it was admitted, even by Jesse Foot,28that the idea after which his unique museum had been formed—namely, that of morphology as the only true basis of a systematic zoological classification—was entirely his own, yet his investigations into the structure of the lower orders of animals were regarded as works of unprofitable curiosity. One surgeon, of no inconsiderable repute, is said to have ventured the remark that Hunter’s preparations were “just as valuable as so many pig’s pettitoes”;29and the president of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks, writing in 1796, plainly expressed his disbelief as to the collection being “an object of importance to the general study of natural history, or indeed to any branch of science except to that of medicine.” It was “without the solace of sympathy or encouragement of approbation, without collateral assistance,”30and careless of achieving fame—for he held that “no man ever was a great man who wanted to be one”—that Hunter laboured to perfect his designs, and established the science of comparative anatomy, and principles which, however neglected in his lifetime, became the ground-work of all medical study and teaching.In accordance with the directions given by Hunter in his will, his collection was offered for purchase to the British government. But the prime minister, Pitt, on being asked to consider the matter, exclaimed: “What! buy preparations! Why, I have not money enough to purchase gunpowder.” He, however, consented to the bestowal of a portion of the king’s bounty for a couple of years on Mrs Hunter and her two surviving children. In 1796 Lord Auckland undertook to urge upon the government the advisability of acquiring the collection, and on the 13th of June 1799, parliament voted £15,000 for this purpose. Its custodianship, after refusal by the College of Physicians, was unanimously accepted by the Corporation of Surgeons on the terms proposed. These were in brief—that the collection be open four hours in the forenoon, two days every week, for the inspection and consultation of the fellows of the College of Physicians, the members of the Company of Surgeons and persons properly introduced by them, a catalogue of the preparations and an official to explain it being at those times always at hand; that a course of not less than twenty-four lectures31on comparative anatomy and other subjects illustrated by the collection be given every year by some member of the Company; and that the preparations be kept in good preservation at the expense of the Corporation, and be subject to the superintendence of a board of sixteen trustees.32The fulfilment of these conditions was rendered possible by the receipt of fees for examinations and diplomas, under the charter by which, in 1800, the Corporation was constituted the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1806 the collection was placed in temporary quarters in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and the sum of £15,000 was voted by parliament for the erection of a proper and commodious building for its preservation and extension. This was followed by a grant of £12,500 in 1807. The collection was removed in 1812 to the new museum, and opened to visitors in 1813. The greater part of the present edifice was built in 1835, at an expense to the college of about £40,000; and the combined Hunterian and collegiate collections, having been rearranged in what are now termed the western and middle museums, were in 1836 made accessible to the public. The erection of the eastern museum in 1852, on premises in Portugal Street, bought in 1847 for £16,000, cost £25,000, of which parliament granted £15,000; it was opened in 1855.The scope of Hunter’s labours may be defined as the explication of the various phases of life exhibited in organized structures, both animal and vegetable, from the simplest to the most highly differentiated. By him, therefore, comparative anatomy was employed, not in subservience to the classification of living forms, as by Cuvier, but as a means of gaining insight into the principle animating and producing these forms, by virtue of which he perceived that, however different in form and faculty, they were all allied to himself. In what does life consist? is a question which in his writings he frequently considers, and which seems to have been ever present in his mind. Life, he taught, was a principle independent of structure,33most tenaciously held by the least highly organized beings, but capable of readier destruction as a whole, as,e.g., by deprivation of heat or by pain, in young than in old animals. In life he beheld an agency working under the control of law, and exercising its functions in various modes and degrees. He perceived it, as Abernethy observes, to be “a great chemist,” a power capable of manufacturing a variety of substances into one kind of generally distributed nutriment, and of furnishing from this a still greater variety of dissimilar substances. Like Harvey, who terms it theanima vegetiva, he regarded it as a principle of self-preservation, which keeps the body from dissolution. Life is shown, said he, in renovation and action; but, although facilitated in its working by mechanical causes, it can exist without action, as in an egg new-laid or undergoing incubation. It is not simply a regulator of temperature; it is a principle which resists cold, conferring on the structures which it endows the capacity of passing some degrees below the freezing-point of ordinary inanimate matter without suffering congelation. Hunter found, in short, that there exists in animals a latent heat of life, set free in the process of death (seeTreatise on the Blood, p. 80). Thus he observed that sap if removed from trees froze at 32° F., but within them might be fluid even at 15°; that a living snail placed in a freezing mixture acquired first a temperature of 28°, and afterwards of 32° ere it froze; and that, whereas a dead egg congealed immediately at 32°, a living egg did so only when its temperature had risen to that point after a previous fall to 29¼°. The idea that the fluid and semifluid as well as the solid constituents of the body contain the vital principle diffused through them he formed in 1755-1756, when, in making drawings illustrative of the changes that take place in the incubated egg, he noted specially that neither the white nor the yolk undergoes putrefaction. The blood he, with Harvey, considered to possess a vitality of its own, more or less independent of that of the animal in which it circulates. Life, he held, is preserved by the compound of the living body and the source of its solid constituents, the living blood. It is to the susceptibility of the latter to be converted into living organized tissue that the union of severed structures by the first intention is due. He even inclined to the belief that the chyle has life, and he considered that food becomes “animalized” in digestion. Coagulation of the blood he compared to the contraction of muscles, and believed to be an operation of life distinct from chemical coagulation, adducing in support of his opinion the fact that, in animals killed by lightning, by violent blows on the stomach, or by the exhaustion of hunting, it does not take place. “Breathing,” said Hunter, “seems to render life to the blood, and the blood continues it in every part of the body.”34Life, he held, could be regarded as a fire, or something similar, and might for distinction’s sake be called “animal fire.” Of this the process of respiration might afford a constant supply, the fixed life supplied to the body in the food being set free and rendered active in the lungs, whilst the air carried off that principle which encloses and retains the animal fire.35The living principle, said Hunter, is coeval with the existence of animal or vegetable matter itself, and may long exist without sensation. The principle upon which depends the power of sensation regulates all our external actions, as the principle of life does our internal, and the two act mutually on each other in consequence of changes produced in the brain. Something (the “materia vitae diffusa”) similar to the components of the brain (the “materia vitae coacervata”) may be supposed to be diffused through the body and even contained in the blood; between these a communication is kept up by the nerves (the “chordae internunciae”).36Neither a material nor a chemical theory of life, however, formed a part of Hunter’s creed. “Mere composition of matter,” he remarked, “does not give life; for the dead body has all the composition it ever had; life is a property we do not understand; we can only see the necessary leading steps towards it.”37As from life only, said he in one of his lectures, we can gain an idea of death, so from death only we gain an idea of life. Life, being an agency leading to, but not consisting of, any modification of matter, “either is something superadded to matter, or else consists in a peculiar arrangement of certain fine particles of matter, which being thus disposed acquire the properties of life.” As a bar of iron may gain magnetic virtue by being placed for a time in a special position, so perhaps the particles of matter arranged and long continued in a certain posture eventually gain the power of life. “I enquired of Mr Hunter,” writes one of his pupils,38“if this did not make for the Exploded Doctrine of EquivocalGeneration: he told me perhaps it did, and that as to Equivocal Generation all we cdhave was negative Proofs of its not taking Place. He did not deny that Equivocal Generation happened; there were neither positive proofs for nor against its taking place.”To exemplify the differences between organic and inorganic growth, Hunter made and employed in his lectures a collection of crystallized specimens of minerals, or, as he termed them, “natural or native fossils.” Of fossils, designated by him “extraneous fossils,” because extraneous respecting the rocks in which they occur, he recognized the true nature, and he arranged them according to a system agreeing with that adopted for recent organisms. The study of fossils enabled him to apply his knowledge of the relations of the phenomena of life to conditions, as exhibited in times present, to the elucidation of the history of the earth in geological epochs. He observed the non-occurrence of fossils in granite, but with his customary scientific caution and insight could perceive no reason for supposing it to be the original matter of the globe, prior to vegetable or animal, or that its formation was different from that of other rocks. In water he recognized the chief agent in producing terrestrial changes (cf.Treatise on the Blood, p. 15, note); but the popular notion that the Noachian deluge might account for the marine organisms discovered on land he pointed out was untenable. From the diversity of the situations in which many fossils and allied living structures are found, he was led to infer that at various periods not only repeated oscillations of the level of the land, lasting thousands of centuries, but also great climatic variations, perhaps due to a change in the ecliptic, had taken place in geological times. Hunter considered that very few fossils of those that resemble recent forms are identical with them. He conceived that the latter might be varieties, but that if they are really different species, then “we must suppose that a new creation must have taken place.” It would appear, therefore, that the origin of species in variation had not struck him as possible. That he believed varieties to have resulted from the influence of changes in the conditions of life in times past is shown by a somewhat obscure passage in his “Introduction to Natural History” (Essays and Observations, i. 4), in which he remarks, “But, I think, we have reason to suppose that there was a period of time in which every species of natural production was the same, there being then no variety in any species,” and adds that “civilization has made varieties in many species, which are the domesticated.” Modern discoveries and doctrines as to the succession of life in time are again foreshadowed by him in the observation in his introduction to the description of drawings relative in incubation (quoted in Pref. toCat. of Phys. Ser.i. p. iv., 1833) that: “If we were capable of following the progress of increase of the number of the parts of the most perfect animal, as they first formed in succession, from the very first, to its state of full perfection, we should probably be able to compare it with some one of the incomplete animals themselves, of every order of animals in the creation, being at no stage different from some of those inferior orders; or, in other words, if we were to take a series of animals from the more imperfect to the perfect, we should probably find an imperfect animal corresponding with some stage of the most perfect.”In pathological phenomena Hunter discerned the results of the perturbation of those laws of life by which the healthy organism subsists. With him pathology was a science of vital dynamics. He afforded principles bearing not on single complaints only, but on the effects of injury and disease in general. To attempt to set forth what in Hunter’s teaching was new to pathology and systematic surgery, or was rendered so by his mode of treatment, would be well-nigh to present an epitome of all that he wrote on those subjects. “When we make a discovery in pathology,” says Adams, writing in 1818, “we only learn what we have overlooked in his writings or forgotten in his lectures.” Surgery, which only in 1745 had formally ceased to be associated with “the art and mystery of barbers,” he raised to the rank of a scientific profession. His doctrines were, necessarily, not those of his age: while lesser minds around him were still dim with the mists of the ignorance and dogmatism of times past, his lofty intellect was illumined by the dawn of a distant day.Authorities.—See, besides the above quoted publications,An Appeal to the present Parliament ... on the subject of the late J. Hunter’s Museum(1795); Sir C. Bell,A Lecture ... being a Commentary on Mr J. Hunter s preparations of the Diseases of the Urethra(1830); The President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England,Address to the Committee for the Erection of a Statue of Hunter(Lond., March 29, 1859); Sir R. Owen, “Sketch of Hunter’s Scientific Character and Works,” in Tom Taylor’sLeicester Square(1874), also in Hunter’s Works, ed. by Palmer, vol. iv. (1837), and inEssays and Observations; the invaluable catalogues of the Hunterian Collection issued by the Royal College of Surgeons; and numerous Hunterian Orations. In theJournal of a Voyage to New South Wales, by John White, is a paper containing directions for preserving animals, printed separately in 1809, besides six zoological descriptions by Hunter; and in theNatural History of Aleppo, by A. Russell, are remarks of Hunter’s on the anatomy of the jerboa and the camel’s stomach. Notes of his lectures on surgery, edited by J. W. K. Parkinson, appeared in 1833 under the title ofHunterian Reminiscences. Hunter’sObservations and Reflections on Geology, intended to serve as an introduction to the catalogue of his collection of extraneous fossils, was published in 1859, and hisMemoranda on Vegetationin 1860.

To the kindness of his disposition, his fondness for animals, his aversion to operations, his thoughtful and self-sacrificing attention to his patients, and especially his zeal to help forward struggling practitioners and others in any want abundantly testify. Pecuniary means he valued no further than they enabled him to promote his researches; and to the poor, to non-beneficed clergymen, professional authors and artists his services were rendered without remuneration. His yearly income in 1763-1774 was never £1000; it exceeded that sum in 1778, for several years before his death was £5000, and at the time of that event had reached above £6000. All his earnings not required for domestic expenses were, during the last ten years of his life, devoted to the improvement of his museum; and his property, this excepted, was found on his decease to be barely sufficient to pay his debts. By his contemporaries generally Hunter was respected as a master of the art and science of anatomy, and as a cautious and trustworthy if not an elegant or very dexterous operator. Few, however, perceived the drift of his biological researches. Although it was admitted, even by Jesse Foot,28that the idea after which his unique museum had been formed—namely, that of morphology as the only true basis of a systematic zoological classification—was entirely his own, yet his investigations into the structure of the lower orders of animals were regarded as works of unprofitable curiosity. One surgeon, of no inconsiderable repute, is said to have ventured the remark that Hunter’s preparations were “just as valuable as so many pig’s pettitoes”;29and the president of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks, writing in 1796, plainly expressed his disbelief as to the collection being “an object of importance to the general study of natural history, or indeed to any branch of science except to that of medicine.” It was “without the solace of sympathy or encouragement of approbation, without collateral assistance,”30and careless of achieving fame—for he held that “no man ever was a great man who wanted to be one”—that Hunter laboured to perfect his designs, and established the science of comparative anatomy, and principles which, however neglected in his lifetime, became the ground-work of all medical study and teaching.

In accordance with the directions given by Hunter in his will, his collection was offered for purchase to the British government. But the prime minister, Pitt, on being asked to consider the matter, exclaimed: “What! buy preparations! Why, I have not money enough to purchase gunpowder.” He, however, consented to the bestowal of a portion of the king’s bounty for a couple of years on Mrs Hunter and her two surviving children. In 1796 Lord Auckland undertook to urge upon the government the advisability of acquiring the collection, and on the 13th of June 1799, parliament voted £15,000 for this purpose. Its custodianship, after refusal by the College of Physicians, was unanimously accepted by the Corporation of Surgeons on the terms proposed. These were in brief—that the collection be open four hours in the forenoon, two days every week, for the inspection and consultation of the fellows of the College of Physicians, the members of the Company of Surgeons and persons properly introduced by them, a catalogue of the preparations and an official to explain it being at those times always at hand; that a course of not less than twenty-four lectures31on comparative anatomy and other subjects illustrated by the collection be given every year by some member of the Company; and that the preparations be kept in good preservation at the expense of the Corporation, and be subject to the superintendence of a board of sixteen trustees.32The fulfilment of these conditions was rendered possible by the receipt of fees for examinations and diplomas, under the charter by which, in 1800, the Corporation was constituted the Royal College of Surgeons. In 1806 the collection was placed in temporary quarters in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and the sum of £15,000 was voted by parliament for the erection of a proper and commodious building for its preservation and extension. This was followed by a grant of £12,500 in 1807. The collection was removed in 1812 to the new museum, and opened to visitors in 1813. The greater part of the present edifice was built in 1835, at an expense to the college of about £40,000; and the combined Hunterian and collegiate collections, having been rearranged in what are now termed the western and middle museums, were in 1836 made accessible to the public. The erection of the eastern museum in 1852, on premises in Portugal Street, bought in 1847 for £16,000, cost £25,000, of which parliament granted £15,000; it was opened in 1855.

The scope of Hunter’s labours may be defined as the explication of the various phases of life exhibited in organized structures, both animal and vegetable, from the simplest to the most highly differentiated. By him, therefore, comparative anatomy was employed, not in subservience to the classification of living forms, as by Cuvier, but as a means of gaining insight into the principle animating and producing these forms, by virtue of which he perceived that, however different in form and faculty, they were all allied to himself. In what does life consist? is a question which in his writings he frequently considers, and which seems to have been ever present in his mind. Life, he taught, was a principle independent of structure,33most tenaciously held by the least highly organized beings, but capable of readier destruction as a whole, as,e.g., by deprivation of heat or by pain, in young than in old animals. In life he beheld an agency working under the control of law, and exercising its functions in various modes and degrees. He perceived it, as Abernethy observes, to be “a great chemist,” a power capable of manufacturing a variety of substances into one kind of generally distributed nutriment, and of furnishing from this a still greater variety of dissimilar substances. Like Harvey, who terms it theanima vegetiva, he regarded it as a principle of self-preservation, which keeps the body from dissolution. Life is shown, said he, in renovation and action; but, although facilitated in its working by mechanical causes, it can exist without action, as in an egg new-laid or undergoing incubation. It is not simply a regulator of temperature; it is a principle which resists cold, conferring on the structures which it endows the capacity of passing some degrees below the freezing-point of ordinary inanimate matter without suffering congelation. Hunter found, in short, that there exists in animals a latent heat of life, set free in the process of death (seeTreatise on the Blood, p. 80). Thus he observed that sap if removed from trees froze at 32° F., but within them might be fluid even at 15°; that a living snail placed in a freezing mixture acquired first a temperature of 28°, and afterwards of 32° ere it froze; and that, whereas a dead egg congealed immediately at 32°, a living egg did so only when its temperature had risen to that point after a previous fall to 29¼°. The idea that the fluid and semifluid as well as the solid constituents of the body contain the vital principle diffused through them he formed in 1755-1756, when, in making drawings illustrative of the changes that take place in the incubated egg, he noted specially that neither the white nor the yolk undergoes putrefaction. The blood he, with Harvey, considered to possess a vitality of its own, more or less independent of that of the animal in which it circulates. Life, he held, is preserved by the compound of the living body and the source of its solid constituents, the living blood. It is to the susceptibility of the latter to be converted into living organized tissue that the union of severed structures by the first intention is due. He even inclined to the belief that the chyle has life, and he considered that food becomes “animalized” in digestion. Coagulation of the blood he compared to the contraction of muscles, and believed to be an operation of life distinct from chemical coagulation, adducing in support of his opinion the fact that, in animals killed by lightning, by violent blows on the stomach, or by the exhaustion of hunting, it does not take place. “Breathing,” said Hunter, “seems to render life to the blood, and the blood continues it in every part of the body.”34Life, he held, could be regarded as a fire, or something similar, and might for distinction’s sake be called “animal fire.” Of this the process of respiration might afford a constant supply, the fixed life supplied to the body in the food being set free and rendered active in the lungs, whilst the air carried off that principle which encloses and retains the animal fire.35The living principle, said Hunter, is coeval with the existence of animal or vegetable matter itself, and may long exist without sensation. The principle upon which depends the power of sensation regulates all our external actions, as the principle of life does our internal, and the two act mutually on each other in consequence of changes produced in the brain. Something (the “materia vitae diffusa”) similar to the components of the brain (the “materia vitae coacervata”) may be supposed to be diffused through the body and even contained in the blood; between these a communication is kept up by the nerves (the “chordae internunciae”).36Neither a material nor a chemical theory of life, however, formed a part of Hunter’s creed. “Mere composition of matter,” he remarked, “does not give life; for the dead body has all the composition it ever had; life is a property we do not understand; we can only see the necessary leading steps towards it.”37As from life only, said he in one of his lectures, we can gain an idea of death, so from death only we gain an idea of life. Life, being an agency leading to, but not consisting of, any modification of matter, “either is something superadded to matter, or else consists in a peculiar arrangement of certain fine particles of matter, which being thus disposed acquire the properties of life.” As a bar of iron may gain magnetic virtue by being placed for a time in a special position, so perhaps the particles of matter arranged and long continued in a certain posture eventually gain the power of life. “I enquired of Mr Hunter,” writes one of his pupils,38“if this did not make for the Exploded Doctrine of EquivocalGeneration: he told me perhaps it did, and that as to Equivocal Generation all we cdhave was negative Proofs of its not taking Place. He did not deny that Equivocal Generation happened; there were neither positive proofs for nor against its taking place.”

To exemplify the differences between organic and inorganic growth, Hunter made and employed in his lectures a collection of crystallized specimens of minerals, or, as he termed them, “natural or native fossils.” Of fossils, designated by him “extraneous fossils,” because extraneous respecting the rocks in which they occur, he recognized the true nature, and he arranged them according to a system agreeing with that adopted for recent organisms. The study of fossils enabled him to apply his knowledge of the relations of the phenomena of life to conditions, as exhibited in times present, to the elucidation of the history of the earth in geological epochs. He observed the non-occurrence of fossils in granite, but with his customary scientific caution and insight could perceive no reason for supposing it to be the original matter of the globe, prior to vegetable or animal, or that its formation was different from that of other rocks. In water he recognized the chief agent in producing terrestrial changes (cf.Treatise on the Blood, p. 15, note); but the popular notion that the Noachian deluge might account for the marine organisms discovered on land he pointed out was untenable. From the diversity of the situations in which many fossils and allied living structures are found, he was led to infer that at various periods not only repeated oscillations of the level of the land, lasting thousands of centuries, but also great climatic variations, perhaps due to a change in the ecliptic, had taken place in geological times. Hunter considered that very few fossils of those that resemble recent forms are identical with them. He conceived that the latter might be varieties, but that if they are really different species, then “we must suppose that a new creation must have taken place.” It would appear, therefore, that the origin of species in variation had not struck him as possible. That he believed varieties to have resulted from the influence of changes in the conditions of life in times past is shown by a somewhat obscure passage in his “Introduction to Natural History” (Essays and Observations, i. 4), in which he remarks, “But, I think, we have reason to suppose that there was a period of time in which every species of natural production was the same, there being then no variety in any species,” and adds that “civilization has made varieties in many species, which are the domesticated.” Modern discoveries and doctrines as to the succession of life in time are again foreshadowed by him in the observation in his introduction to the description of drawings relative in incubation (quoted in Pref. toCat. of Phys. Ser.i. p. iv., 1833) that: “If we were capable of following the progress of increase of the number of the parts of the most perfect animal, as they first formed in succession, from the very first, to its state of full perfection, we should probably be able to compare it with some one of the incomplete animals themselves, of every order of animals in the creation, being at no stage different from some of those inferior orders; or, in other words, if we were to take a series of animals from the more imperfect to the perfect, we should probably find an imperfect animal corresponding with some stage of the most perfect.”

In pathological phenomena Hunter discerned the results of the perturbation of those laws of life by which the healthy organism subsists. With him pathology was a science of vital dynamics. He afforded principles bearing not on single complaints only, but on the effects of injury and disease in general. To attempt to set forth what in Hunter’s teaching was new to pathology and systematic surgery, or was rendered so by his mode of treatment, would be well-nigh to present an epitome of all that he wrote on those subjects. “When we make a discovery in pathology,” says Adams, writing in 1818, “we only learn what we have overlooked in his writings or forgotten in his lectures.” Surgery, which only in 1745 had formally ceased to be associated with “the art and mystery of barbers,” he raised to the rank of a scientific profession. His doctrines were, necessarily, not those of his age: while lesser minds around him were still dim with the mists of the ignorance and dogmatism of times past, his lofty intellect was illumined by the dawn of a distant day.

Authorities.—See, besides the above quoted publications,An Appeal to the present Parliament ... on the subject of the late J. Hunter’s Museum(1795); Sir C. Bell,A Lecture ... being a Commentary on Mr J. Hunter s preparations of the Diseases of the Urethra(1830); The President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England,Address to the Committee for the Erection of a Statue of Hunter(Lond., March 29, 1859); Sir R. Owen, “Sketch of Hunter’s Scientific Character and Works,” in Tom Taylor’sLeicester Square(1874), also in Hunter’s Works, ed. by Palmer, vol. iv. (1837), and inEssays and Observations; the invaluable catalogues of the Hunterian Collection issued by the Royal College of Surgeons; and numerous Hunterian Orations. In theJournal of a Voyage to New South Wales, by John White, is a paper containing directions for preserving animals, printed separately in 1809, besides six zoological descriptions by Hunter; and in theNatural History of Aleppo, by A. Russell, are remarks of Hunter’s on the anatomy of the jerboa and the camel’s stomach. Notes of his lectures on surgery, edited by J. W. K. Parkinson, appeared in 1833 under the title ofHunterian Reminiscences. Hunter’sObservations and Reflections on Geology, intended to serve as an introduction to the catalogue of his collection of extraneous fossils, was published in 1859, and hisMemoranda on Vegetationin 1860.

(F. H. B.)

1The date is thus entered in the parish register, see Joseph Adams,Memoirs, Appendix, p. 203. The Hunterian Oration, instituted in 1813 by Dr Matthew Baillie and Sir Everard Home, is delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons on the 14th of February, which Hunter used to give as the anniversary of his birth.2Ottley’s date, 1738, is inaccurate, see S. F. Simmons,Account of ... W. Hunter, p. 7. Hunter’s mother died on the 3rd of November 1751, aged 66.3So in Home’sLife, p. xvi., and Ottley’s, p. 15. Hunter himself (Treatise on the Blood, p. 62) mentions the date 1755.4Ottley incorrectly gives 1753 as the date. In the buttery book for 1755 at St Mary’s Hall his admission is thus noted: “Die Junii 5to1755 Admissus est Johannes Hunter superioris ordinis Commensalis.” Hunter apparently left Oxford after less than two months’ residence, as the last entry in the buttery book with charges for battels against his name is on July 25, 1755. His name was, however, retained on the books of the Hall till December 10, 1756. The record of Hunter’s matriculation runs: “Ter° Trin. 1755.—Junii 5toAul. S. Mar. Johannes Hunter 24 Johannis de Kilbride in Com. Clidesdale Scotiae Arm. fil.”5Ottley,Life of J. Hunter, p. 22.6Treatise on the Blood, p. 21.7See Adams,Memoirs, pp. 32, 33. Cf. Hunter’sTreatise on the Blood, p. 8, andWorks, ed. Palmer, i. 604.—On the employment of Hunter’s term “increased action” with respect to inflammation, see Sir James Paget,Lect. on Surg. Path., 3rd ed., p. 321 sqq.8According to Hunter, as quoted in Palmer’s edition of his lectures, p. 437, the accident was “after dancing, and after a violent fit of the cramp”; W. Clift, however, who says he probably never danced, believed that he met with the accident “in getting up from the dissecting table after being cramped by long sitting” (see W. Lawrence,Hunt. Orat., 1834, p. 64).9The subjects and dates of his subsequent papers in theTransactions, the titles of which give little notion of the richness of their contents, are as follows: The torpedo (1773); air-receptacles in birds, and the Gillaroo trout (1774); theGymnotus electricus, and the production of heat by animals and vegetables (supplemented in 1777), (1775); the recovery of people apparently drowned (1776); the free martin (1779); the communication of smallpox to the foetus in utero, and the occurrence of male plumage in old hen pheasants (1780); the organ of hearing in fishes (1782); the anatomy of a “new marine animal” described by Home (1785); the specific identity of the wolf, jackal and dog (supplemented in 1789), the effect on fertility of extirpation of one ovarium, and the structure and economy of whales (1787); observations on bees (1793); and some remarkable caves in Bayreuth and fossil bones found therein (1794). With these may be included a paper by Home, from materials supplied by Hunter, on certain horny excrescences of the human body.10Mrs Hunter died on the 7th of January 1821, in Holles Street, Cavendish Square, London, in her seventy-ninth year. She was a handsome and accomplished woman, and well fulfilled the social duties of her position. The words for Haydn’s English canzonets were supplied by her, and were mostly original poems; of these the lines beginning “My mother bids me bind my hair” are, from the beauty of the accompanying music, among the best known. (See R. Nares inGent. Mag.xci. pt. 1, p. 89, quoted in Nichols’sLit. Anec., 2nd ser., vii. 638.)11Hunt. Orat., 1842, p. 15.12The condition of this animal during hibernation was a subject of special interest to Hunter, who thus introduces it, even in a letter of condolence to Jenner in 1778 on a disappointment in love: “But let her go, never mind her. I shall employ you with hedgehogs, for I do not know how far I may trust mine.”13See his evidence at the trial of Captain Donellan,Works, i. 195.14On the discovery of the dyeing of bones by madder, see Belchier, Phil. Trans., vol. xxxix., 1736, pp. 287 and 299.15Essays and Observations, i. 55, 56. “May we not claim for him,” says Sir Wm. Fergusson, with reference to these experiments, “that he anticipated by a hundred years the scientific data on which the present system of human grafting is conducted?” (Hunt. Orat., 1871, p. 17).16Essays and Observations, i. 115; cf.Works, i. 391.17TheTransactionsof the Society contain papers by Hunter on inflammation of veins (1784), intussusception (1789), a case of paralysis of the muscles of deglutition (1790), and a case of poisoning during pregnancy (1794), with others written by Home, from materials supplied by him, on Hunter’s operation for the cure of popliteal aneurism, on loose cartilages in joints, on certain horny excrescences of the human body, and on the growth of bones.18Bell lived with Hunter fourteen years,i.e.from 1775 to 1789, and was employed by him chiefly in making and drawing anatomical preparations for the museum. He died in 1792 at Sumatra, where he was assistant-surgeon to the East India Company.19O’Brien, dreading dissection by Hunter, had shortly before his death arranged with several of his countrymen that his corpse should be conveyed by them to the sea, and sunk in deep water; but his undertaker, who had entered into a pecuniary compact with the great anatomist, managed that while the escort was drinking at a certain stage on the march seawards, the coffin should be locked up in a barn. There some men he had concealed speedily substituted an equivalent weight of paving-stones for the body, which was at night forwarded to Hunter, and by him taken in his carriage to Earl’s Court, and, to avoid risk of a discovery, immediately after suitable division boiled to obtain the bones. See Tom Taylor,Leicester Square, ch. xiv. (1874); cf.Annual Register, xxvi. 209 (1783).20See C. R. Leslie and Tom Taylor,Life and Times of Sir J. Reynolds, ii. 474 (1865).21Works, i. 265-266.22A transcript of a portion of Hunter’s MSS., made by Clift in 1793 and 1800, was edited by Sir Richard Owen, in two volumes with notes, in 1861, under the title ofEssays and Observations in Natural History, Anatomy, Physiology, Psychology and Geology. On the destruction of Hunter’s papers see Clift’s “Appendix” in vol. ii. p. 497, also W. H. Flower,Introd. Lect., pp. 7-9 (1870).23In hisTreatise on the Blood, p. 288, Hunter observes: “We find it a common principle in the animal machine, that every part increases in some degree according to the action required. Thus we find ... vessels become larger in proportion to the necessity of supply, as for instance, in the gravid uterus; the external carotids in the stag, also, when his horns are growing, are much larger than at any other time.”24See Sir R. Owen, “John Hunter and Vivisection,”Brit. Med. Journ.(February 22, 1879, p. 284). In the fourth of his operations for popliteal aneurism, Hunter for the first time did not include the vein in the ligature. His patient lived for fifty years afterwards. The results on the artery of this operation are to be seen in specimen 3472A(Path. Ser.) in the Hunterian Museum.25Home,Trans. of Soc. for Impr. of Med. and Chirurg. Knowl.i. 147 (1793). Excess of heat in the injured limb was noticed also in Hunter’s second case on the day after the operation; and in his fourth case it reached 4°-5° on the first day, and continued during a fortnight.26The record of Hunter’s death in theSt James Chroniclefor October 15-17, 1793, p. 4, col. 4, makes no allusion to the immediate cause of Hunter’s death, but gives the following statement: “John Hunter.—This eminent Surgeon and valuable man was suddenly taken ill, yesterday, in the Council-room of St George’s Hospital. After receiving the assistance which could be afforded by two Physicians and a Surgeon, he was removed in a close chair to his house, in Leicester Fields, where he expired about two o’clock.” Examination of the heart revealed disease involving the pericardium, endocardium and arteries, the coronary arteries in particular showing ossific change.27Hunt. Orat., 1827, p. 5.28See p. 266 of his malicious so-calledLife of John Hunter(1794).29Cf. J. H. Green,Hunt. Orat., 1840, p. 27.30Abernethy,Physiological Lectures, p. 11 (1817).31Instituted in 1806.32Increased to seventeen in 1856.33How clearly he held this view is seen in his remark (Treatise on the Blood, p. 28, cf. p. 46) that, as the coagulating lymph of the blood is probably common to all animals, whereas the red corpuscles are not, we must suppose the lymph to be the essential part of that fluid. Hunter was the first to discover that the blood of the embryos of red-blooded animals is at first colourless, resembling that of invertebrates. (See Owen, Preface to vol. iv. ofWorks, p. xiii.)34Treatise on the Blood, p. 63.35Essays and Observations, i. 113.36Treatise on the Blood, p. 89.37Ib.p. 90.38P. P. Staple, with the loan of whose volume of MS. notes of Hunter’s “Chirurgical Lectures,” dated, on the last page, Sept. 20th, 1787, the writer was favoured by Sir W. H. Broadbent.

2Ottley’s date, 1738, is inaccurate, see S. F. Simmons,Account of ... W. Hunter, p. 7. Hunter’s mother died on the 3rd of November 1751, aged 66.

3So in Home’sLife, p. xvi., and Ottley’s, p. 15. Hunter himself (Treatise on the Blood, p. 62) mentions the date 1755.

4Ottley incorrectly gives 1753 as the date. In the buttery book for 1755 at St Mary’s Hall his admission is thus noted: “Die Junii 5to1755 Admissus est Johannes Hunter superioris ordinis Commensalis.” Hunter apparently left Oxford after less than two months’ residence, as the last entry in the buttery book with charges for battels against his name is on July 25, 1755. His name was, however, retained on the books of the Hall till December 10, 1756. The record of Hunter’s matriculation runs: “Ter° Trin. 1755.—Junii 5toAul. S. Mar. Johannes Hunter 24 Johannis de Kilbride in Com. Clidesdale Scotiae Arm. fil.”

5Ottley,Life of J. Hunter, p. 22.

6Treatise on the Blood, p. 21.

7See Adams,Memoirs, pp. 32, 33. Cf. Hunter’sTreatise on the Blood, p. 8, andWorks, ed. Palmer, i. 604.—On the employment of Hunter’s term “increased action” with respect to inflammation, see Sir James Paget,Lect. on Surg. Path., 3rd ed., p. 321 sqq.

8According to Hunter, as quoted in Palmer’s edition of his lectures, p. 437, the accident was “after dancing, and after a violent fit of the cramp”; W. Clift, however, who says he probably never danced, believed that he met with the accident “in getting up from the dissecting table after being cramped by long sitting” (see W. Lawrence,Hunt. Orat., 1834, p. 64).

9The subjects and dates of his subsequent papers in theTransactions, the titles of which give little notion of the richness of their contents, are as follows: The torpedo (1773); air-receptacles in birds, and the Gillaroo trout (1774); theGymnotus electricus, and the production of heat by animals and vegetables (supplemented in 1777), (1775); the recovery of people apparently drowned (1776); the free martin (1779); the communication of smallpox to the foetus in utero, and the occurrence of male plumage in old hen pheasants (1780); the organ of hearing in fishes (1782); the anatomy of a “new marine animal” described by Home (1785); the specific identity of the wolf, jackal and dog (supplemented in 1789), the effect on fertility of extirpation of one ovarium, and the structure and economy of whales (1787); observations on bees (1793); and some remarkable caves in Bayreuth and fossil bones found therein (1794). With these may be included a paper by Home, from materials supplied by Hunter, on certain horny excrescences of the human body.

10Mrs Hunter died on the 7th of January 1821, in Holles Street, Cavendish Square, London, in her seventy-ninth year. She was a handsome and accomplished woman, and well fulfilled the social duties of her position. The words for Haydn’s English canzonets were supplied by her, and were mostly original poems; of these the lines beginning “My mother bids me bind my hair” are, from the beauty of the accompanying music, among the best known. (See R. Nares inGent. Mag.xci. pt. 1, p. 89, quoted in Nichols’sLit. Anec., 2nd ser., vii. 638.)

11Hunt. Orat., 1842, p. 15.

12The condition of this animal during hibernation was a subject of special interest to Hunter, who thus introduces it, even in a letter of condolence to Jenner in 1778 on a disappointment in love: “But let her go, never mind her. I shall employ you with hedgehogs, for I do not know how far I may trust mine.”

13See his evidence at the trial of Captain Donellan,Works, i. 195.

14On the discovery of the dyeing of bones by madder, see Belchier, Phil. Trans., vol. xxxix., 1736, pp. 287 and 299.

15Essays and Observations, i. 55, 56. “May we not claim for him,” says Sir Wm. Fergusson, with reference to these experiments, “that he anticipated by a hundred years the scientific data on which the present system of human grafting is conducted?” (Hunt. Orat., 1871, p. 17).

16Essays and Observations, i. 115; cf.Works, i. 391.

17TheTransactionsof the Society contain papers by Hunter on inflammation of veins (1784), intussusception (1789), a case of paralysis of the muscles of deglutition (1790), and a case of poisoning during pregnancy (1794), with others written by Home, from materials supplied by him, on Hunter’s operation for the cure of popliteal aneurism, on loose cartilages in joints, on certain horny excrescences of the human body, and on the growth of bones.

18Bell lived with Hunter fourteen years,i.e.from 1775 to 1789, and was employed by him chiefly in making and drawing anatomical preparations for the museum. He died in 1792 at Sumatra, where he was assistant-surgeon to the East India Company.

19O’Brien, dreading dissection by Hunter, had shortly before his death arranged with several of his countrymen that his corpse should be conveyed by them to the sea, and sunk in deep water; but his undertaker, who had entered into a pecuniary compact with the great anatomist, managed that while the escort was drinking at a certain stage on the march seawards, the coffin should be locked up in a barn. There some men he had concealed speedily substituted an equivalent weight of paving-stones for the body, which was at night forwarded to Hunter, and by him taken in his carriage to Earl’s Court, and, to avoid risk of a discovery, immediately after suitable division boiled to obtain the bones. See Tom Taylor,Leicester Square, ch. xiv. (1874); cf.Annual Register, xxvi. 209 (1783).

20See C. R. Leslie and Tom Taylor,Life and Times of Sir J. Reynolds, ii. 474 (1865).

21Works, i. 265-266.

22A transcript of a portion of Hunter’s MSS., made by Clift in 1793 and 1800, was edited by Sir Richard Owen, in two volumes with notes, in 1861, under the title ofEssays and Observations in Natural History, Anatomy, Physiology, Psychology and Geology. On the destruction of Hunter’s papers see Clift’s “Appendix” in vol. ii. p. 497, also W. H. Flower,Introd. Lect., pp. 7-9 (1870).

23In hisTreatise on the Blood, p. 288, Hunter observes: “We find it a common principle in the animal machine, that every part increases in some degree according to the action required. Thus we find ... vessels become larger in proportion to the necessity of supply, as for instance, in the gravid uterus; the external carotids in the stag, also, when his horns are growing, are much larger than at any other time.”

24See Sir R. Owen, “John Hunter and Vivisection,”Brit. Med. Journ.(February 22, 1879, p. 284). In the fourth of his operations for popliteal aneurism, Hunter for the first time did not include the vein in the ligature. His patient lived for fifty years afterwards. The results on the artery of this operation are to be seen in specimen 3472A(Path. Ser.) in the Hunterian Museum.

25Home,Trans. of Soc. for Impr. of Med. and Chirurg. Knowl.i. 147 (1793). Excess of heat in the injured limb was noticed also in Hunter’s second case on the day after the operation; and in his fourth case it reached 4°-5° on the first day, and continued during a fortnight.

26The record of Hunter’s death in theSt James Chroniclefor October 15-17, 1793, p. 4, col. 4, makes no allusion to the immediate cause of Hunter’s death, but gives the following statement: “John Hunter.—This eminent Surgeon and valuable man was suddenly taken ill, yesterday, in the Council-room of St George’s Hospital. After receiving the assistance which could be afforded by two Physicians and a Surgeon, he was removed in a close chair to his house, in Leicester Fields, where he expired about two o’clock.” Examination of the heart revealed disease involving the pericardium, endocardium and arteries, the coronary arteries in particular showing ossific change.

27Hunt. Orat., 1827, p. 5.

28See p. 266 of his malicious so-calledLife of John Hunter(1794).

29Cf. J. H. Green,Hunt. Orat., 1840, p. 27.

30Abernethy,Physiological Lectures, p. 11 (1817).

31Instituted in 1806.

32Increased to seventeen in 1856.

33How clearly he held this view is seen in his remark (Treatise on the Blood, p. 28, cf. p. 46) that, as the coagulating lymph of the blood is probably common to all animals, whereas the red corpuscles are not, we must suppose the lymph to be the essential part of that fluid. Hunter was the first to discover that the blood of the embryos of red-blooded animals is at first colourless, resembling that of invertebrates. (See Owen, Preface to vol. iv. ofWorks, p. xiii.)

34Treatise on the Blood, p. 63.

35Essays and Observations, i. 113.

36Treatise on the Blood, p. 89.

37Ib.p. 90.

38P. P. Staple, with the loan of whose volume of MS. notes of Hunter’s “Chirurgical Lectures,” dated, on the last page, Sept. 20th, 1787, the writer was favoured by Sir W. H. Broadbent.

HUNTER, ROBERT MERCER TALIAFERRO(1809-1887), American statesman, was born in Essex county, Virginia, on the 21st of April 1809. He entered the university of Virginia in his seventeenth year and was one of its first graduates; he then studied law at the Winchester (Va.) Law School, and in 1830 was admitted to the bar. From 1835 to 1837 he was a member of the Virginia house of delegates; from 1837 to 1843 and from 1845 to 1847 was a member of the national house of representatives, being Speaker from 1839 to 1841; and from 1847 to 1861 he was in the senate, where he was chairman of the finance committee (1850-1861). He is credited with having brought about a reduction of the quantity of silver in the smaller coins; he was the author of the Tariff Act of 1857 and of the bonded-warehouse system, and was one of the first to advocate civil service reform. In 1853 he declined President Fillmore’s offer to make him secretary of state. At the National Democratic Convention at Charleston, S.C., in 1860 he was the Virginia delegation’s choice as candidate for the presidency of the United States, but was defeated for the nomination by Stephen A. Douglas. Hunter did not regard Lincoln’s election as being of itself a sufficient cause for secession, and on the 11th of January 1861 he proposed an elaborate but impracticable scheme for the adjustment of differences between the North and the South, but when this and several other efforts to the same end had failed he quietly urged his own state to pass the ordinance of secession. From 1861 to 1862 he was secretary of state in the Southern Confederacy; and from 1862 to 1865 was a member of the Confederate senate, in which he was, at times, a caustic critic of the Davis administration. He was one of the commissioners to treat at the Hampton Roads Conference in 1865 (seeLincoln, Abraham), and after the surrender of General Lee was summoned by President Lincoln to Richmond to confer regarding the restoration of Virginia in the Union. From 1874 to 1880 he was treasurer of Virginia, and from 1885 until his death near Lloyds, Virginia, on the 18th of July 1887, was collector of the Port of Tappahannock, Virginia.

See Martha T. Hunter,A Memoir of Robert M. T. Hunter(Washington, 1903) for his private life, and D. R. Anderson,Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter, in the John P. Branch Historical Papers of Randolph Macon College (vol. ii. No. 2, 1906), for his public career.

HUNTER, WILLIAM(1718-1783), British physiologist and physician, the first great teacher of anatomy in England, was born on the 23rd of May 1718, at East Kilbride, Lanark. He was the seventh child of his parents, and an elder brother of the still more famous John Hunter (q.v.). When fourteen years of age, he was sent to the university of Glasgow, where he studied for five years. He had originally been intended for the church, but, scruples concerning subscription arising in his mind, he followed the advice of his friend William Cullen, and resolved to devote himself to physic. During 1737-1740 he resided with Cullen at Hamilton, and then, to increase his medical knowledge before settling in partnership with his friend, he spent the winter of 1740-1741 at Edinburgh. Thence he went to London, where Dr James Douglas (1675-1742), an anatomist and obstetrician of some note, to whom he had been recommended, engaged his services as a tutor to his son and as a dissector, and assisted him to enter as a surgeon’s pupil at St George’s Hospital and to procure the instruction of the anatomist Frank Nicholls (1699-1778). When Dr Douglas died Hunter still continued to live with his family. In 1746 he undertook, in place of Samuel Sharp, the delivery, for a society of naval practitioners, of a series of lectures on operative surgery, so satisfactorily that he was requested to include anatomy in his course. It was not long before he attained considerable fame as a lecturer; for not only was his oratorical ability great, but he differed from his contemporaries in the fullness and thoroughness of his teaching, and in the care which he took to provide the best possible practical illustrations of his discourses. We read that the syllabus of Edward Nourse (1701-1761), published in 1748,totam rem anatomicam complectens, comprised only twenty-three lectures, exclusive of a short and defective “Syllabus Chirurgicus,” and that at “one of the most reputable courses of anatomy inEurope,” which Hunter had himself attended, the professor was obliged to demonstrate all the parts of the body, except the nerves and vessels (shown in a foetus) and the bones, on a single dead subject, and for the explanation of the operations of surgery used a dog! In 1747 Hunter became a member of the Corporation of Surgeons. In the course of a tour through Holland to Paris with his pupil, J. Douglas, in 1728, he visited Albinus at Leiden, and inspected with admiration his injected preparations. By degrees Hunter renounced surgical for obstetric practice, in which he excelled. He was appointed a surgeon-accoucheur at the Middlesex Hospital in 1748, and at the British Lying-in Hospital in the year following. The degree of M.D. was conferred upon him by the university of Glasgow on the 24th of October 1750. About the same time he left his old abode at Mrs Douglas’s, and settled as a physician in Jermyn Street. He became a licentiate of the College of Physicians on the 30th of September 1756. In 1762 he was consulted by Queen Charlotte, and in 1764 was made physician-extraordinary to her Majesty.

On the departure of his brother John for the army, Hunter engaged as an assistant William Hewson (1739-1774), whom he subsequently admitted to partnership in his lectures. Hewson was succeeded in 1770 by W. C. Cruikshank (1745-1800). Hunter was elected F.R.S. in 1767; F.S.A. in 1768, and third professor of anatomy to the Royal Academy of Arts; and in 1780 and 1782 respectively an associate of the Royal Medical Society and of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris. During the closing ten years of his life his health failed greatly. His last lecture, at the conclusion of which he fainted, was given, contrary to the remonstrances of friends, only a few days before his death, which took place in London on the 30th of March 1783. He was buried in the rector’s vault at St James’s, Piccadilly.

Hunter had in 1765 requested of the prime minister, George Grenville, the grant of a plot of ground on which he might establish “a museum in London for the improvement of anatomy, surgery, and physics” (see “Papers” at end of hisTwo Introductory Lectures, 1784), and had offered to expend on its erection £7000, and to endow in perpetuity a professorship of anatomy in connexion with it. His application receiving no recognition, he after many months abandoned his scheme, and built himself a house, with lecture and dissecting-rooms, in Great Windmill Street, whither he removed in 1770. In one fine apartment in this house was accommodated his collection, comprising anatomical and pathological preparations, ancient coins and medals, minerals, shells and corals. His natural history specimens were in part a purchase, for £1200, of the executors of his friend, Dr John Fothergill (1712-1780). Hunter’s whole collection, together with his fine library of Greek and Latin classics, and an endowment of £8000, by his will became, after the lapse of twenty years, the property of the university of Glasgow.

Hunter was never married, and was a man of frugal habits. Like his brother John, he was an early riser, and a man of untiring industry. He is described as being in his lectures, which were of two hours’ duration, “both simple and profound, minute in demonstration, and yet the reverse of dry and tedious”; and his mode of introducing anecdotal illustrations of his topic was most happy. Lecturing was to him a pleasure, and, notwithstanding his many professional distractions, he regularly continued it, because, as he said, he “conceived that a man may do infinitely more good to the public by teaching his art than by practising it” (see “Memorial” appended toIntrod. Lect.p. 120).

Hunter was the author of several contributions to theMedical Observations and Enquiriesand thePhilosophical Transactions. In his paper on the structure of cartilages and joints, published in the latter in 1743, he anticipated what M. F. X. Bichat sixty years afterwards wrote concerning the structure and arrangement of the synovial membranes. HisMedical Commentaries(pt. i., 1762, supplemented 1764) contains, among other like matter, details of his disputes with the Monros as to who first had successfully performed the injection of thetubuli testis(in which, however, both he and they had been forestalled by A. von Haller in 1745), and as to who had discovered the true office of the lymphatics, and also a discussion on the question whether he or Percivall Pott ought to be considered the earliest to have elucidated the nature ofhernia congenita, which, as a matter of fact, had been previously explained by Haller. In theCommentariesis exhibited Hunter’s one weakness—an inordinate love of controversy. His impatience of contradiction he averred to be a characteristic of anatomists, in whom he once jocularly condoned it, on the plea that “the passive submission of dead bodies” rendered the crossing of their will the less bearable. His great work,The Anatomy of the Gravid Uterus, exhibited in Figures, fol., was published in 1774. His posthumous works areTwo Introductory Lectures(1784), andAnatomical Description of the Human Gravid Uterus(1794), which was re-edited by Dr E. Rigby in 1843.SeeGent. Mag.liii. pt. 1, p. 364 (1783); S. F. Simmons,An Account of the Life of W. Hunter(1783); Adams’s and Ottley’s Lives of J. Hunter; Sir B. C. Brodie,Hunterian Oration(1837); W. Munk,The Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London, ii. 205 (1878).

SeeGent. Mag.liii. pt. 1, p. 364 (1783); S. F. Simmons,An Account of the Life of W. Hunter(1783); Adams’s and Ottley’s Lives of J. Hunter; Sir B. C. Brodie,Hunterian Oration(1837); W. Munk,The Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London, ii. 205 (1878).

(F. H. B.)

HUNTER, WILLIAM ALEXANDER(1844-1898), Scottish jurist and politician, was born in Aberdeen on the 8th of May 1844, and educated at Aberdeen grammar school and university. He entered the Middle Temple, and was called to the English bar in 1867, but then was occupied mainly with teaching. In 1869 he was appointed professor of Roman law at University College, London, and in 1878 professor of jurisprudence, resigning that chair in 1882. His name became well known during this period as the author of a standard work on Roman law,Roman Law in the Order of a Code, together with a smaller introductory volume for students,Introduction to Roman Law. After 1882 Hunter took up politics and was elected to parliament for Aberdeen as a Liberal in 1885. In the House of Commons he was a prominent supporter of Charles Bradlaugh, he was the first to advocate old age pensions, and in 1890 carried a proposal to free elementary education in Scotland. In 1895 his health broke down; he retired from parliament in 1896 and died on the 21st of July 1898.

HUNTER, SIR WILLIAM WILSON(1840-1900), British publicist, son of Andrew Galloway Hunter, a Glasgow manufacturer, was born at Glasgow on the 15th of July 1840. He was educated at Glasgow University (B.A. 1860), Paris and Bonn, acquiring a knowledge of Sanscrit, and passing first in the final examination for the Indian Civil Service in 1862. Posted in the remote district of Birbhum in the lower provinces of Bengal, he began collecting local traditions and records, which formed the materials for his novel and suggestive publication, entitledThe Annals of Rural Bengal, a book which did much to stimulate public interest in the details of Indian administration. He also compiledA Comparative Dictionary of the Non-Aryan Languages of India, a glossary of dialects based mainly upon the collections of Brian Houghton Hodgson, which testifies to the industry of the writer but contains much immature philological speculation. In 1872 he brought out two attractive volumes on the province of Orissa and its far-famed temple of Jagannath. In 1869 Lord Mayo asked Hunter to submit a scheme for a comprehensive statistical survey of the Indian empire. The work involved the compilation of a number of local gazetteers, in various stages of progress, and their consolidation in a condensed form upon a single and uniform plan. The conception was worthy of the gigantic projects formed by Arthur Young and Sir John Sinclair at the close of the 18th century, and the fact that it was successfully carried through between 1869 and 1881 was owing mainly to the energy and determination of Hunter. The early period of his undertaking was devoted to a series of tours which took him into every corner of India. He himself undertook the supervision of the statistical accounts of Bengal (20 vols., 1875-1877) and of Assam (2 vols., 1879). The various statistical accounts, when completed, comprised no fewer than 128 volumes. The immense task of condensing this mass of material proceeded concurrently with their compilation, an administrative feat which enabledThe Imperial Gazetteer of Indiato appear in 9 volumes in 1881 (2nd ed., 14 vols., 1885-1887; 3rd ed., 26 vols., including atlas, 1908). Hunter adopted a transliteration of vernacular place-names, by which means the correct pronunciation is ordinarily indicated; but hardly sufficient allowance was made for old spellings consecrated by history and long usage. Hunter’s own article on India was published in 1880 asA Brief History of the Indian Peoples, andhas been widely translated and utilized in Indian schools. A revised form was issued in 1895, under the title ofThe Indian Empire: its People, History and Products. In 1882 Hunter, as a member of the governor-general’s council, presided over the commission on Indian Education; in 1886 he was elected vice-chancellor of the university of Calcutta. In 1887 he retired from the service, was created K.C.S.I., and settled at Oaken Holt, near Oxford. He arranged with the Clarendon Press to publish a series ofRulers of India, to which he himself contributed volumes on Dalhousie (1890) and Mayo (1892). He had previously, in 1875, written an officialLife of Lord Mayo, in two volumes. He also wrote a weekly article on Indian affairs forThe Times. But the great task to which he applied himself on his settlement in England was a history upon a large scale of theBritish Dominion in India, two volumes of which only had appeared when he died, carrying the reader barely down to 1700. He was much hindered by the confused state of his materials, a portion of which he arranged and published in 1894 asBengal Manuscript Records, in three volumes. A delightful story,The Old Missionary(1895), andThe Thackerays in India(1897), a gossipy volume which appeals to all readers ofThe Newcomes, may be regarded as the relaxations of an Anglo-Indian amid the stress of severer studies. In the winter of 1898-1899, in consequence of the fatigue incurred in a journey to the Caspian and back, on a visit to the sick-bed of one of his two sons, Hunter was stricken down by a severe attack of influenza, which affected his heart. He died at Oaken Holt on the 6th of February 1900.

HUNTING(the verbal substantive from “hunt”; O. Eng.huntian,hunta; apparently connected with O. Eng.hentan, Gothichinpan, to capture, O.H.G.hunda, booty), the pursuit of game and wild animals, for profit or sport; equivalent to “chase” (like “catch,” from Lat.captare, Fr.chasse, Ital.caccia). The circumstances which render necessary the habitual pursuit of wild animals, either as a means of subsistence or for self-defence, generally accompany a phase of human progress distinctly inferior to the pastoral and agricultural stages; resorted to as a recreation, however, the practice of the chase in most cases indicates a considerable degree of civilization, and sometimes ultimately becomes the almost distinctive employment of the classes which are possessed of most leisure and wealth. It is in some of its latter aspects, viz. as a “sport,” pursued on fixed rules and principles, that hunting is dealt with here.

Information as to the field sports of the ancients is in many directions extremely fragmentary. With regard to the ancient Egyptians, however, we learn that the huntsmen constituted an entire sub-division of the great secondHistoric Field Sports.caste; they either followed the chase on their own account, or acted as the attendants of the chiefs in their hunting excursions, taking charge of the dogs, and securing and bringing home the game. The game was sought in the open deserts which border on both sides the valley of the Nile; but (by the wealthy) sometimes in enclosed spaces into which the animals had been driven or in preserves. Besides the noose and the net, the arrow, the dart and the hunting pole orvenabulumwere frequently employed. The animals chiefly hunted were the gazelle, ibex, oryx, stag, wild ox, wild sheep, hare and porcupine; also the ostrich for its plumes, and the fox, jackal, wolf, hyaena and leopard for their skins, or as enemies of the farm-yard. The lion was occasionally trained as a hunting animal instead of the dog. The sportsman appears, occasionally at least, in the later periods, to have gone to cover in his chariot or on horseback; according to Wilkinson, when the dogs threw off in a level plain of great extent, it was even usual for him “to remain in his chariot, and, urging his horses to their full speed, endeavour to turn or intercept them as they doubled, discharging a well-directed arrow whenever they came within its range.”1The partiality for the chase which the ancient Egyptians manifested was shared by the Assyrians and Babylonians, as is shown by the frequency with which hunting scenes are depicted on the walls of their temples and palaces; it is even said that their dresses and furniture were ornamented with similar subjects.2The game pursued included the lion, the wild ass, the gazelle and the hare, and the implements chiefly employed seem to have been the javelin and the bow. There are indications that hawking was also known. The Assyrian kings also maintained magnificent parks, or “paradises,” in which game of every kind was enclosed; and perhaps it was from them that the Persian sovereigns borrowed the practice mentioned both by Xenophon in theCyropaediaand by Curtius. According to Herodotus, Cyrus devoted the revenue of four great towns to meet the expenses of his hunting establishments. The circumstances under which the death of the son of Croesus is by the same writer (i. 34-45) related to have occurred, incidentally show in what high estimation the recreation of hunting was held in Lydia. In Palestine game has always been plentiful, and the Biblical indications that it was much sought and duly appreciated are numerous. As means of capture, nets, traps, snares and pitfalls are most frequently alluded to; but the arrow (Isa. vii. 24), the spear and the dart (Job. xli. 26-29) are also mentioned. There is no evidence that the use of the dog (Jos.Ant.iv. 8, 10, notwithstanding) or of the horse in hunting was known among the Jews during the period covered by the Old Testament history; Herod, however, was a keen and successful sportsman, and is recorded by Josephus (B.J.i. 21, 13, compareAnt.xv. 7, 7; xvi. 10, 3) to have killed no fewer than forty head of game (boar, wild ass, deer) in one day.

The sporting tastes of the ancient Greeks, as may be gathered from many references in Homer (Il.ix. 538-545;Od.ix. 120, xvii. 295, 316, xix. 429 seq.), had developed at a very early period; they first found adequate literary expression in the work of Xenophon entitledCynegeticus,3which expounds his principles and embodies his experience in his favourite art of hunting. The treatise chiefly deals with the capture of the hare; in the author’s day the approved method was to find the hare in her form by the use of dogs; when found she was either driven into nets previously set in her runs or else run down in the open. Boar-hunting is also described; it was effected by nets into which the animal was pursued, and in which when fairly entangled he was speared. The stag, according to the same work, was taken by means of a kind of wooden trap (ποδοστράβη), which attached itself to the foot. Lions, leopards, lynxes, panthers and bears are also specially mentioned among the large game; sometimes they were taken in pitfalls, sometimes speared by mounted horsemen. As a writer on field sports Xenophon was followed by Arrian, who in hisCynegeticus, in avowed dependence on his predecessor, seeks to supplement such deficiencies in the earlier treatise as arose from its author’s unacquaintance with the dogs of Gaul and the horses of Scythia and Libya. Four books ofCynegetica, extending to about 2100 hexameters, by Oppian have also been preserved; the last of these is incomplete, and it is probable that a fifth at one time existed. The poem contains some good descriptive passages, as well as some very curious indications of the state of zoological knowledge in the author’s time. Hunting scenes are frequently represented in ancient works of art, especially the boar-hunt, and also that of the hare. In Roman literature allusions to the pleasures of the chase (wild ass, boar, hare, fallow deer being specially mentioned as favourite game) are not wanting (Virg.Georg.iii. 409-413;Ecl.iii. 75; Hor.Od.i. 1, 25-28); it seems to have been viewed; however, with less favour as an occupation for gentlemen, and to have been chiefly left to inferiors and professionals. The immensevivariaortheriotropheia, in which various wild animals, such as boars, stags and roe-deer, were kept in a state of semi-domestication, were developments which arose at a comparatively late period; as also were thevenationesin the circus, although these are mentioned as having been known as early as 186B.C.The bald and meagre poem of Grattius Faliscus on hunting (Cynegetica) is modelled upon Xenophon’s prose work; a still extant fragment (315 lines) of a similar poem with the same title, of much later date, by Nemesianus, seems to have at onetime formed the introduction to an extended work corresponding to that of Oppian.

That the Romans had borrowed some things in the art of hunting from the Gauls may be inferred from the namecanis gallicus(Spanishgalgo) for a greyhound, which is to be met with both in Ovid and Martial; also in the words (canis)vertragusandsegusius, both of Celtic origin.4According to Strabo (p. 200) the Britons also bred dogs well adapted for hunting purposes. The addiction of the Franks in later centuries to the chase is evidenced by the frequency with which not only the laity but also the clergy were warned by provincial councils against expending so much of their time and money on hounds, hawks and falcons; and we have similar proof with regard to the habits of other Teutonic nations subsequent to the introduction of Christianity.5Originally among the northern nations sport was open to every one6except to slaves, who were not permitted to bear arms; the growth of the idea of game-preserving kept pace with the development of feudalism. For its ultimate development in Britain seeForest Law, where also the distinction between beasts of forest or venery, beasts of chase and beasts and fowls of warren is explained. See alsoGame Laws.

Modern Hunting.—The term “hunting” has come to be applied specially to the pursuit of such quarries as the stag or fox, or to following an artificially laid scent, with horse and hound. It thus corresponds to the Fr.chasse au courre, as distinguished fromchasse au tir,à l’oiseau, &c., and to the Ger.hetzjagdas distinguished frombirsch. In the following article the English practice is mainly considered.

Doubtless the early inhabitants of Britain shared to a large extent in the habits of the other Celtic peoples; the fact that they kept good hunting dogs is vouched for by Strabo; and an interesting illustration of the manner in which these were used is given in the inscription quoted by Orelli (n.1603)—“Silvano Invicto Sacrum—ob aprum eximiae formae captum, quem multi antecessores praedari non potuerunt.” Asser, the biographer of Alfred the Great, states that before the prince was twelve years of age he “was a most expert and active hunter, and excelled in all the branches of that noble art, to which he applied with incessant labour and amazing success.”7Of his grandson Athelstan it is related by William of Malmesbury that after the victory of Brunanburgh he imposed upon the vanquished king of Wales a yearly tribute, which included a certain number of “hawks and sharp-scented dogs fit for hunting wild beasts.” According to the same authority, one of the greatest delights of Edward the Confessor was “to follow a pack of swift hounds in pursuit of game, and to cheer them with his voice.” It was under the Anglo-Saxon kings that the distinction between the higher and lower chase first came to be made—the former being expressly for the king or those on whom he had bestowed the pleasure of sharing in it, while only the latter was allowed to the proprietors of the land. To the reign of Cnut belong the “Constitutiones de Foresta,” according to which four thanes were appointed in every province for the administration of justice in all matters connected with the forests; under them were four inferior thanes to whom was committed immediate care of the vert and venison.8The severity of the forest laws which prevailed during the Norman period is sufficient evidence of the sporting ardour of William and his successors. The Conqueror himself “loved the high game as if he were their father”; and the penalty for the unauthorized slaughter of a hart or hind was loss of both eyes.

At an early period stag hunting was a favourite recreation with English royalty. It seems probable that in the reign of Henry VIII. the royal pack of buckhounds was kennelledStag hunting.at Swinley, where, in the reign of Charles II. (1684), a deer was found that went away to Lord Petre’s seat in Essex; only five got to the end of this 70 m. run, one being the king’s brother, the duke of York. George III. was a great stag hunter, and met the royal pack as often as possible.

InThe Chase of the Wild Red Deer, Mr Collyns says that the earliest record of a pack of staghounds in the Exmoor district is in 1598, when Hugh Polland, Queen Elizabeth’s ranger, kept one at Simonsbath. The succeeding rangers of Exmoor forest kept up the pack until some 200 years ago, the hounds subsequently passing into the possession of Mr Walter of Stevenstone, an ancestor of the Rolle family. Successive masters continued the sport until 1825, when the fine pack, descended probably from the bloodhound crossed with the old southern hound, was sold in London. It is difficult to imagine how the dispersion of such a pack could have come about in such a sporting country, but in 1827 Sir Arthur Chichester got a pack together again. Stag hunting begins on the 12th of August, and ends on the 8th of October; there is then a cessation until the end of the month, when the hounds are unkennelled for hind hunting, which continues up to Christmas; it begins again about Ladyday, and lasts till the 10th of May. The mode of hunting with the Devon and Somerset hounds is briefly this: the whereabouts of a warrantable stag is communicated to the master by that important functionary the harbourer; two couple of steady hounds called tufters are then thrown into cover, and, having singled out a warrantable deer, follow him until he is forced to make for the open, when the body of the pack are laid on. Very often two or three hours elapse before the stag breaks, but a run over the wild country fully atones for the delay.

It is only within comparatively recent times that the fox has come to be considered as an animal of the higher chase. William Twici, indeed, who was huntsman-in-chief to Edward II., and who wrote in Norman French a treatise onFox hunting.hunting,9mentions the fox as a beast of venery, but obviously as an altogether inferior object of sport. Strutt also gives an engraving, assigned by him to the 14th century, in which three hunters, one of whom blows a horn, are represented as unearthing a fox, which is pursued by a single hound. The precise date of the establishment of the first English pack of hounds kept entirely for fox hunting cannot be accurately fixed. In the work of “Nimrod” (C. J. Apperley), entitledThe Chase, there is (p. 4) an extract from a letter from Lord Arundel, dated February 1833, in which the writer says that his ancestor, Lord Arundel, kept a pack of foxhounds between 1690 and 1700, and that they remained in the family till 1782, when they were sold to the celebrated Hugh Meynell, of Quorndon Hall, Leicestershire. Lord Wilton again, in hisSports and Pursuits of the English, says that “about the year 1750 hounds began to be entered solely to fox.” TheFieldof November 6, 1875, p. 512, contains an engraving of a hunting-horn then in the possession of the late master of the Cheshire hounds, and upon the horn is the inscription:—“Thomas Boothby, Esq., Tooley Park, Leicester. With this horn he hunted the first pack of foxhounds then in England fifty-five years. Born 1677. Died 1752. Now the property of Thomas d’Avenant, Esq., county Salop, his grandson.” These extracts do not finally decide the point, because both Mr Boothby’s and Lord Arundel’s hounds may have hunted other game besides fox, just as in Edward IV.’s time there were “fox dogs” though not kept exclusively for fox. On the whole, it is probable that Lord Wilton’s surmise is not far from correct. Since fox hunting first commenced, however, the system of the sport has been much changed. In our great-grandfathers’ time the hounds met early, and found the fox by the drag, that is, by the line he took to his kennel on his return from a foraging expedition. Hunting thedrag was doubtless a great test of nose, but many good runs must have been lost thereby, for the fox must often have heard the hounds upwind, and have moved off before they could get on good terms with him. At the present day, the woodlands are neither so large nor so numerous as they formerly were, while there are many more gorse covers; therefore, instead of hunting the drag up to it, a much quicker way of getting to work is to find a fox in his kennel; and, the hour of the meeting being later, the fox is not likely to be gorged with food, and so unable to take care of himself at the pace at which the modern foxhound travels.

Cub hunting carried out on a proper principle is one of the secrets of a successful season. To the man who cares for hunting, as distinct from riding, September and October are not the least enjoyable months of the whole hunting season. As soon as the young entry have recovered from the operation of “rounding,” arrangements for cub hunting begin. The hounds must have first of all walking, then trotting and fast exercise, so that their feet may be hardened, and all superfluous fat worked off by the last week in August. So far as the hounds are concerned, the object of cub hunting is to teach them their duty; it is a dress rehearsal of the November business. In company with a certain proportion of old hounds, the youngsters learn to stick to the scent of a fox, in spite of the fondness they have acquired for that of a hare, from running about when at walk. When cubbing begins, a start is made at 4 or 5A.M., and then the system is adopted of tracking the cub by his drag. A certain amount of blood is of course indispensable for hounds, but it should never be forgotten that a fox cub of seven or eight months old, though tolerably cunning, is not so very strong; the huntsman should not, therefore, be over-eager in bringing to hand every cub he can find.

Hare hunting, which must not be confounded with Coursing (q.v.), is an excellent school both for men and for horses. It is attended with the advantages of being cheaper than any other kind, and of not needing so large an area ofHare.country. Hare hunting requires considerable skill; Beckford even goes so far as to say: “There is more of true hunting with harriers than with any other description of hounds.... In the first place, a hare, when found, generally describes a circle in her course which naturally brings her upon her foil, which is the greatest trial for hounds. Secondly, the scent of the hare is weaker than that of any other animal we hunt, and, unlike some, it is always the worse the nearer she is to her end.” Hare hunting is essentially a quiet amusement; no hallooing at hounds nor whip-cracking should be permitted; nor should the field make any noise when a hare is found, for, being a timid animal, she might be headed into the hounds’ mouths. Capital exercise and much useful knowledge are to be derived by running with a pack of beagles. There are the same difficulties to be contended with as in hunting with the ordinary harrier, and a very few days’ running will teach the youthful sportsman that he cannot run at the same pace over sound ground and over a deep ploughed field, up hill and down, or along and across furrows.

Otter hunting, which is less practised now than formerly, begins just as all other hunting is drawing to a close. When the waterside is reached an attempt is made to hit upon the track by which the otter passed to hisOtter.“couch,” which is generally a hole communicating with the river, into which the otter often dives on first hearing the hounds. When the otter “vents” or comes to the surface to breathe, his muzzle only appears above water, and when he is viewed or traced by the mud he stirs up, or by air bubbles, the hounds are laid on. Notwithstanding the strong scent of the otter, he often escapes the hounds, and then a cast has to be made. When he is viewed an attempt is made to spear him by any of the field who may be within distance; if their spears miss, the owners must wade to recover them. Should the otter be transfixed by a spear, the person who threw it goes into the water and raises the game over his head on the spear’s point. If instead of being speared, he is caught by the hounds, he is soon worried to death by them, though frequently not before he has inflicted some severe wounds on one or more of the pack.

When railways were first started in England dismal prophecies were made that the end of hunting would speedily be brought about. The result on the whole has been the reverse. While in some counties the sport has suffered, townsmenPacks.who formerly would have been too far from a meet can now secure transport for themselves and their horses in all directions; and as a consequence, meets of certain packs are not advertised because of the number of strangers who would be induced to attend. The sport has never been so vigorously pursued as it was at the beginning of the 20th century, 19 packs of staghounds being kept in England and 4 in Ireland, over 170 packs of foxhounds in England, 10 in Scotland and 23 in Ireland, with packs of harriers and beagles too numerous to be counted. The chase of the wild stag is carried on in the west country by the Devon and Somerset hounds, which hunt three or four days a week from kennels at Dunster; by the Quantock; and by a few other local packs. In other parts of England staghound packs are devoted to the capture of the carted deer, a business which is more or less of a parody on the genuine sport, but is popular for the reason that whereas with foxhounds men may have a blank day, they are practically sure of a gallop when a deer is taken out in a cart to be enlarged before the hounds are laid on. Complaints are often raised about the cruelty of what is called tame stag hunting, and it became a special subject of criticism that a pack should still be kept at the Royal kennels at Ascot (it was abolished in 1901) and hunted by the Master of the Buckhounds; but it is the constant endeavour of all masters and hunt servants to prevent the infliction of any injury on the deer. Their efforts in this direction are seldom unsuccessful; and it appears to be a fact that stags which are hunted season after season come to understand that they are in no grave danger. Packs of foxhounds vary, from large establishments in the “Shires,” the meets of which are attended by hundreds of horsemen, some of whom keep large stables of hunters in constant work—for though a man at Melton, for instance, may see a great deal of sport with half-a-dozen well-seasoned animals, the number is not sufficient if he is anxious to be at all times well mounted—to small kennels in the north of England, where the field follow on foot. The “Shires” is a recognized term, but is nevertheless somewhat vague. The three counties included in the expression are Leicestershire, Rutlandshire and Northamptonshire. Several packs which hunt within these limits are not supposed, however, to belong to the “Shires,” whereas a district of the Belvoir country is in Lincolnshire, and to hunt with the Belvoir is certainly understood to be hunting in the “Shires.” The Shire hounds include the Belvoir, the Cottesmore, the Quorn and the Pytchleys; for besides the Pytchley proper, there is a pack distinguished as the Woodland. It is generally considered that the cream of the sport lies here, but with many of the packs which are generally described as “provincial” equally good hunting may be obtained. Round about London a man who is bent on the pursuit of fox or stag may gratify his desire in many directions. The Essex and the Essex Union, the Surrey and the Surrey Union, the Old Berkeley, the West Kent, the Burstow, the Hertfordshire, the Crawley and Horsham, the Puckeridge, as regards foxhounds; the Berkhampstead, the Enfield Chase, Lord Rothschild’s, the Surrey, the West Surrey and the Warnham, as regards staghounds—as well as the Bucks and Berks, which was substituted for the Royal Buckhounds—are within easy reach of the capital.

Questions are constantly raised as to whether horse and hounds have improved or deteriorated in modern times. It is probable that the introduction of scientific agriculture has brought about an increase of pace. Hounds huntModern horses and hounds.as well as ever they did, are probably faster on the whole, and in the principal hunts more thoroughbred horses are employed. For pace and endurance no hunter approaches the English thoroughbred; and for a bold man who “means going,” a steeplechase horse is often the best animal that could be obtained, for when he has become too slow to win races “between the flags,” he can always gallop much faster, and usually lasts much longer, than animals who have not his advantage of blood. The quondam “’chaser” is, however,usually apt to be somewhat impetuous at his fences. But it must by no means be supposed that every man who goes out hunting desires to gallop at a great pace and to jump formidable obstacles, or indeed any obstacles at all. A large proportion of men who follow hounds are quite content to do so passively through gates and gaps, with a canter along the road whenever one is available. A few of the principal packs hunt five days a week, and sometimes even six, and for such an establishment not fewer than seventy-five couples of hounds are requisite. A pack which hunts four days a week will be well supplied with anything between fifty and sixty couples, and for two days a week from twenty-five to thirty will suffice. The young hound begins cub-hunting when he is some eighteen months old, and as a rule is found to improve until his third or fourth season, though some last longer than this. Often, however, when a hound is five or six years old he begins to lack speed. Exceptional animals naturally do exceptional things, and a famous hound called Potentate is recorded by the 8th duke of Beaufort to have done notable service in the hunting field for eleven seasons.

Servants necessary for a pack include the huntsman, the duties of whose office a master sometimes fulfils himself; two whippers-in, an earth-stopper and often a kennel huntsman is also employed, though the 18th Lord WilloughbyHunt servants.de Broke (d. 1902), a great authority, laid it down that “the man who hunts the hounds should always feed them.” In all but the largest establishments the kennel huntsman is generally called the “feeder.” It is his business to look after the pack which is not hunting, to walk them out, to prepare the food for the hunting pack so that it is ready when they return, and in the spring to attend to the wants of the matrons and whelps. A kennel huntsman proper may be described as the man who does duty when the master hunts his own hounds, undertaking all the responsibilities of the huntsman except actually hunting the pack. It may be said that the first duty of a huntsman is to obtain the confidence of his hounds, to understand them and to make himself understood; and the intelligence of hounds is remarkable. If, for example, it is the habit of the huntsman to give a single note on his horn when hounds are drawing a covert, and a double note when a fox is found, the pack speedily understand the significance. The mysteries of scent are certainly no better comprehended now than they were more than a hundred years ago when Peter Beckford wrote hisThoughts on Hunting. The subject of scent is full of mysteries. The great authority already quoted, the 8th duke of Beaufort, noted as a very extraordinary but well-known fact, for example, “that in nine cases out of ten if a fox is coursed by a dog during a run all scent ceases afterwards, even when you get your hounds to the line of the fox beyond where the dog has been.” This is one of many phenomena which have always remained inexplicable. The duties of the whipper-in are to a great extent explained by his title. Whilst the huntsman is drawing the cover the whipper-in is stationed at the spot from which he can best see what is going on, in order to view the fox away; and it is his business to keep the hounds together when they have found and got away after the fox. There are many ways in which a whipper-in who is not intelligent and alert may spoil sport; indeed, the duke of Beaufort went so far as to declare that “in his experience, with very few exceptions, nine days out of ten that the whipper-in goes out hunting he does more harm than good.” In woodland countries, however, a good whipper-in is really of almost as much importance as the huntsman himself; if he is not alert the hounds are likely to divide, as when running a little wide they are apt to put up a fresh fox. The earth-stopper “stops out” and “puts to”—the first expression signifying blocking, during the night, earths and drains to which foxes resort, the second performing the same duties in the morning so as to prevent the fox from getting to ground when he has been found. In the interests of humanity care should be taken that the earth-stopper always has with him a small terrier, as it is often necessary to “stop-out” permanently; and unless a dog is run through the drain some unfortunate creature in it, a fox, cat or rabbit, may be imprisoned and starved to death. This business is frequently performed by a gamekeeper, a sum being paid him for any litter of cubs or fox found on his beat.

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