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



1845 appeared his " Odontography," a very important work, founded 

 on microscopic examinations, containing descriptions and drawings of 

 the structure of the teeth of every class of animals. His " Lectures 

 on Comparative Anatomy and Physiology" were published between 

 1843 and 1846. His great work on the "Archetype and Homologies 

 of the Vertebrate Skeleton " was the fruit of twenty-one years of study 

 of the subject, and presented a revision of Cuvier's conclusions in the 

 direction of recognizing a greater conformity to type than his illus- 

 trious predecessor had been willing to admit. In forwarding a copy 

 of this work to Professor Silliman, of Yale College, Professor Owen 

 wrote, in 1846 : " You may remember the condition in which this phil- 

 osophical department of anatomy was left by the great Cuvier and 

 Geoff roy, and the discussions which unhappily tended to sever those 

 estimable men in the latter period of their lives. The result was the 

 formation of two schools, or parties, in the French world of anatomy, 

 and subsequently the facts and arguments bearing upon these tran- 

 scendental questions have been viewed in Paris through the prism of 

 such party feeling. The chief and most cherished labor and reflec- 

 tions of many past years have been devoted by me to the acquisition 

 of such truth as might lie at the bottom of the well into which this 

 philosophy of anatomy seemed to have sunk after the departure of the 

 great luminaries of the Jardin des Plantes." 



In this work, and one on " The Nature of Limbs," that appeared 

 after it, Professor Owen developed the idea of Oken, that the typical 

 form of development in the higher mammals is the vertebra. In 

 another work, " On Parthenogenesis," he introduced a term, which has 

 since come into general use, to describe a most curious and interesting 

 phenomenon in reproduction. 



A very important division of Professor Owen's investigations is his 

 work relating to the apteryx, and other fossil gigantic birds of New 

 Zealand, concerning which he presented numerous carefully elaborated 

 papers to the Royal and Zoological Societies. The successful restora- 

 tion of one of these birds, from the few parts first found, was regarded 

 by him as affording a vindication of Cuvier's principle, that the entire 

 animal may be reconstructed from a single bone, or articular facet of a 

 bone. By other applications of this principle to more or less complete 

 fossil remains he was able to restore many remarkable forms of extinct 

 animals from the fossil fragments brought home by Darwin from South 

 America. He carried on valuable studies on the sloths from the same 

 region, among which was the mylodon, and described the gigantic ex- 

 tinct marsupials of Australia. Turning his attention to the fossil beds 

 at home, he published memoirs on the chelonia of the Purbeck lime- 

 stones and Wealden clays, and the reptiles of the London clay and the 

 cretaceous formations, and a monograph of the British fossil mammalia. 

 Among his later studies in the field of fossil anatomy is his reconstruc- 

 tion of the curious long-tailed bird from Solenhofen, the Archeopteryx. 



