1893. O WEN. 23 



as having been specially created according to certain fixed and pre- 

 ordained ideal types. The two beliefs, far from being reciprocally 

 exclusive, can and do exist in perfect harmony. 



Immediately underlying the question here touched upon reposes 

 one of the deepest and most important of all philosophical questions, 

 but we have no space to enter upon its consideration here. Pro- 

 foundly impressed as we are, however, with the significance of questions 

 touching philosophical anatomy, we cannot refrain from expressing our 

 sense of the deep gratitude the world owes to Sir Richard Owen, who, 

 years ago, forced questions such as these upon willing and unwilling 

 ears. The details of his system are erroneous, much of it is fanciful 

 and baseless. But he has nevertheless enriched zoology with a know- 

 ledge of a multitude of valuable facts, and many of his memoirs are 

 models for those who come after him. To not a few kindnesses, and 

 to many worthy actions, unknown to the world, we can testify. Of 

 him, at least, it can never be said that he sought eminence through 

 the degradation of his species, or that with selfish recklessness he 

 threw broadcast seeds producing fruits fatally poisonous to all that is 

 highest and best in man, or that gives any virtue, beauty, and dignity 

 to human hfe. His work is done, his troubles, his labours, and 

 disappointments are over. May his end bring him peace. 



St. George Mivart. 



III.— SIR RICHARD OWEN'S RESEARCHES ON THE 

 INVERTEBRATA. 



In the course of more than half a century's active devotion to 

 scientific research. Sir Richard Owen has investigated the structure of 

 almost every group of living and fossil organisms from man to the 

 internal parasites affecting his frame. His contributions to know- 

 ledge of the invertebrated animals are not so numerous as his publica- 

 tions on the living and extinct forms of the vertebrata, but his atten- 

 tion was nevertheless directed successfully in early life to this 

 interesting division of the animal kingdom, and his original memoir 

 on the Pearly Nautilus, published in 1832, w-hen he was only twenty- 

 seven years of age, laid the foundation of his well-deserved fame as 

 a physiological anatomist. Just twelve years later he was awarded 

 the Copley Medal of the Royal Society, in recognition of the merits 

 of a memoir on the fossil " Belemnites " published in the Philosophical 

 Transactions. '° 



The general results of Professor Owen's investigations of the 

 Invertebrata were epitomised in his Catalogues of the Fossil Inverte- 

 brata in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, in which more 

 than three hundred and fifty species of fossil cephalopoda collected in 

 the previous century by his famous predecessor in office, John Hunter, 



1° In conjunction with the Memoir on the Monotreme Mammalia. 



