and very ill-favoured and lean-fleshed, such as I never saw in all the land of Egypt for badness"; while to the people round Golden Square, where he pitched his camp, "he was a zealous student of the human body, who might or might not restore you to health, but would certainly wish to anatomize you if he failed."
From a perusal of some of his letters—of which there are many, perhaps too many, printed—we seem to have lost the great surgeon, and to be reading the queries of a Gilbert White and the requests of an omnivorous collector. "In his old age, full of suffering, overworked, and close to death, he was yet writing to Africa for swallows, ostrich-eggs, a camel, cuckoos, a young lion, everything respecting the bee tribe, chameleons, and any other beast or bird." There was something magnificent in the way he purchased for his collection; he simply spent all he had in acquisitions. Ordinary people will call this improvidence, but ordinary people do not form scientific collections or create museums. Nemesis, however, spares not the man of lofty ideal, and Hunter had his distressing thoughts. "He had saved no income for his wife and children, and he could not insure his life; his museum must be sold to keep them after he was dead, or, if not sold to Government, then brought under the hammer; and the greater part of his writings was still in manuscript." Angina tortured him during his last years, but he received the mercy of a sudden death.
Two of his expressions will well bear repetition. "Never ask me what I have said, or what I have written; but if you will ask me what my present opinions are, I will tell you." The other relates to an experience on the hedgehog by Jenner. "I think your solution is just; but why think? why not try the experiment?" Under the immortal fame of the great surgeon and anatomist lies buried a real and enthusiastic naturalist.
