SKETCH OF PROFESSOR RICHARD OWEN, F.R.S. 109 



workers rank among the very poorest. Young men are now warned 

 by their friends to avoid the highest class of brain-work, and even to 

 shun the learned professions, " because they do not pay." I meet with 

 books containing the records of original research, yet for which the 

 author has received less than the wages of a stone-breaker for the time 

 employed. I meet with inventions which ruin the inventor and enrich 

 his followers. Verily the manual laborer has scant cause to envy the 

 brain- worker. Journal of Science. 



SKETCH OF PROFESSOR RICHARD OWEN, F. R. S. 



PROFESSOR OWEN'S especial field of labor, that of compara- 

 tive anatomy, covers every portion of the realm of zoology ; 

 and in that field, as one of his biographers well observes, he has pub- 

 lished original papers on every branch of the animal kingdom, living 

 and fossil. Another writer, reviewing his work, has said felicitously 

 and justly that, " from the sponge to man, he has thrown light on 

 every subject he has touched." 



Richard Owe^ was bora in Lancaster, England, July 20, 1804. 

 He received an elementary education at the grammar-school of his 

 native town, and was for some time a pupil of a surgeon in that place. 

 He became a student of the University of Edinburgh in 1824, and 

 there enjoyed the guidance of the third Monro, Alison, Jameson, and 

 Hope, in the university, and of Barclay in the out-door school. He 

 was one of the founders of the Hunterian Society, and was chosen 

 president of it in 1825. He visited Paris in the same year, and made 

 the acquaintance of Baron Cuvier. Having spent about a year in the 

 study of medicine at Edinburgh, he went to London, and became a 

 student in the medical school of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where 

 he received the diploma of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1826. 

 He had intended to enter the navy, but had settled down to practice 

 in London, when Dr. Abernethy, with whom he had been associated for 

 a little time at St. Bartholomew's as one of the dissectors, procured for 

 him a position as assistant to Dr. Clift, Curator of the Museum of the 

 Royal College of Surgeons. In this position it was his duty to make 

 the catalogue of the Hunterian collection ; and he prepared catalogues 

 of the " Pathological Specimens," " Monsters and Malformations," 

 and, chiefly, of the " Specimens of Natural History in Spirits," in 1830 

 and 1831. He continued the study of these collections through many 

 years, succeeding Clift as curator of the museum on his death, and 

 was gradually led by them to the extensive field of research with 

 which his name is connected. In order to identify the specimens, it 

 was necessary to make new dissections ; and these were constantly 

 opening new paths of inquiry and leading to new discoveries. He 



