Page:The Harveian oration, 1873.djvu/62

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 Collection,' numbered on in continuation of the Sloane Collection.

Mr. E. Maude Thompson, by the employment of various scientific methods, the observation of which went some way to compensate 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 416 folio pages, the average number of lines in a page being thirty-three or thirty-four; the average of words, 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