Melville graduated M.D. at the
University of Edinburgh, and became Demonstrator in Anatomy there. He then moved to the
University of Oxford as assistant to
Henry Wentworth Acland. He lectured to the
Royal Zoological Society. At the 1847
British Association meeting Melville took part in the debate on
Lepidosiren, judging it to be an amphibian. Acland did not find Melville easy to work with, and replaced him with
Lionel Beale; Melville left Oxford in 1847. It was during this Oxford period that
Hugh Edwin Strickland approached Melville about their joint book on the dodo. Melville began work on the anatomical aspects in 1847. The "Oxford head", from
John Tradescant's dodo was dissected, as was the "London foot", and the remains of the "Oxford foot", most of what remained of the dodo specimen that had been exhibited in the 18th century. The book's publication provoked a search for fossil evidence of the dodo on
Mauritius, to supplement the scanty specimens available. In April 1848 Melville was working with
Gideon Mantell on
Iguanadon and
Hylaeosaurus. Later in the year they went together to visit the private collections of
George Bax Holmes and
William Devonshire Saull, as well as the
British Museum, as Mantell pursued his intense quest to undermine the original
dinosaur concept of 1842, as advocated by
Richard Owen. Combative by nature, Melville was quite prepared to question the work of Owen on fossil reptiles: Owen's view was that the dodo was related to vultures, where Strickland and Melville associated it with pigeons and doves. Matters came to a head in May 1849, and then Mantell and Melville directly attacked Owen over
Iguanadon. Strickland engaged Owen in controversy over the dodo in 1849–50, but by this time Melville had taken up his chair in Galway; In 1854 he made a botanical tour in
County Sligo with
David Moore, who in the same year introduced Melville to
Alexander Goodman More. Melville went on to help More with the
Cybele Hibernica. Andrew Smith Melville the botanist was his son. ==Works==