[9] The subjects and dates of his subsequent papers in the Transactions, 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); the Gymnotus 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.
[10] Mrs 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 in Gent. Mag. xci. pt. 1, p. 89, quoted in Nichols’s Lit. Anec., 2nd ser., vii. 638.)
[11] Hunt. Orat., 1842, p. 15.
[12] The 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.”
[13] See his evidence at the trial of Captain Donellan, Works, i. 195.
[14] On the discovery of the dyeing of bones by madder, see Belchier, Phil. Trans., vol. xxxix., 1736, pp. 287 and 299.
[15] Essays 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).
[16] Essays and Observations, i. 115; cf. Works, i. 391.
[17] The Transactions of 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.
[18] Bell 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.