Page:The Harveian oration, 1873.djvu/62

 56 and had nearly ceased to hope for it, I came upon Walter Warner's MS., contained in Dr. Birch's collection (which, according to him, had been made over to the Royal Society), under the title, '4394> Birch Collec- tion,' numbered on in continuation of the Sloane Collection. Mr. E. Maude Thompson, by the employ- ment of various scientific methods, the obser- vation of which went some way to compen- sate me for the tedious labour entailed upon me by the result to which they brought him, identified the MS. as being really Warner's, and even in bringing its date down to a year close upon 1610, half-a-dozen years or so, therefore, before Harvey first lectured at the College of Physicians. The MS. being thus identified I set myself down to look through its 4 1 6 folio pages, the average num- ber of lines in a page being thirty-three or thirty-four; the average of w r ords, many of them idle ones, being eight or nine in a line. I do not think it is very likely that I have missed any clearer exposition of Warner's views than the one which I am about to read from page 138 ; nor do I think that, by