The manuscripts of Sir William Bowman.

FROM time to time there reappear among the archives of great families manuscripts and mementos of their distinguished forebears, and the fortunate investigator is enabled to produce a little new evidence bearing on the lives of great men. In the possession of Sir John Bowman of Newbury are a great number of papers originally belonging to his great grandfather, the illustrious Victorian doctor Sir William Bowman, whose influence upon medical teaching, particularly that of histological anatomy and physiology, and upon the development of ophthalmic surgery, are not, perhaps, nowadays fully appreciated. Sir John Bowman does not, of course, remember his great-grandfather, though another member of the family, Mr. Humphrey Bowman, now in his eighty-sixth year, has memories of his grandfather which are vivid and clear. He was about thirteen years old when Sir William died and he recalls happy childhood holidays at Sir William's country home near Dorking. Since William Bowman was born in 1816thirteen months after Waterloo-these two lives represent a considerable span of time. The manuscripts now in the possession of his great-grandson relate both to Sir William Bowman, and to other members of his family, and they are interesting and in some cases remarkable. Sir William's father was John Eddowes Bowman (1785-1841), the son of a tobacconist of Nantwich, Cheshire. He worked for a time with his father but then went into banking and settled in Nantwich and later Welshpool, Wrexham, and Manchester. He married his cousin Elizabeth Eddowes, and William, the third son and the fourth child, was born on 20 July 1816. John Eddowes Bowman was a notable geologist and naturalist, a Fellow of the Linnaean and Geological Societies and of the Manchester Philosophical Society. Many of his manuscripts and drawings survive among the papers, including a manuscript bound copy, with drawings and maps, of his Tour through the Hebrides, 1825. Sir Charles Lyall, the eminent geologist, wrote of him (Elements of Geology, 1871, p. 382): 'The late Mr. Bowman was the first who gave a satisfactory explanation of the manner in which distinct coal seams, after maintaining their independence for miles, may at length unite, and then persist throughout another wide area with a thickness equal to that which the separate seams had previously maintained.' We find John Eddowes Bowman writing to his son about J. L. R. Agassiz (1807-1873), the Swiss naturalist, who published his Fishes ofBrazil in 1830. 'Agassiz', wrote Bowman in 1840, 'has named all Gardner's Brazilian fishes which are only seven species though all new and exceedingly interesting ... He returned to London but stops at the Marquess of Northampton, or I would have sent the stickleback by him. He will be at the meeting of the Geological Society next Wednesday and will be glad to see you if you will ask Lonsdale to introduce you.'