i8 NATURAL SCIENCE. Jan.. 



after label calls to mind that Owen first studied and described the 

 remains exhibited, and though he was not free from the errors of the 

 early investigators, and was very jealous of his contemporaries, his 

 triumphs will linger in our memories longer than his weaknesses or 

 mistakes. 



Few students realise the magnitude of Owen's work, and it is 

 only those who search in many fields that can comprehend the genius 

 of the man who has now passed to his rest. 



C. Davies Sherborn. 



II.— SIR RICHARD OWEN'S HYPOTHESES. 



It is now more than sixty years since the Zoological Society 

 published the earliest of those anatomical papers on the Anthropoid 

 Apes, among the later of which was the first thorough and 

 detailed description of the skulls of the Chimpanzee and Gorilla. 

 These, together with skilful restorations of the extinct birds of New 

 Zealand and many other anatomical papers well-known to zoologists, 

 will cause the name of Owen long to live in the grateful memory of all 

 men who have the cause of Natural Science at heart. It seems, indeed, 

 that the fame of our veteran Comparative Anatomist is likely rather 

 to augment than decline. As time goes on and the disputes which 

 formerly arose about the precise definition of" corpus callosum," and 

 the presence of the "hippocampus minor " fade from memory, the 

 many merits of the greatest English Zoologist of the first half of the 

 nineteenth century will, we think, be more and more generally 

 recognised. The esteem in which he has continued to be held during 

 recent years is clearly shown by the award to him by the Council of 

 the Linnean Society of their first Zoological Medal. 



However Sir Richard Owen may in some respects have laid him- 

 self open to criticism, he has certainly been the victim of some 

 injustice. It may be that a sense of such unfairness had its influence 

 in that award to him of the Linnean Medal to which we have just 

 referred. 



This injustice mainly concerns some of his fascinating hypotheses 

 relating to the essential nature of the processes of generation and 

 repair, and concerning certain archetypal principles of our own bodily 

 structure which he first made familiar in England. 



We well recollect a brilliant lecture given at the College of 

 Surgeons concerning "virgin reproduction," to which process, so far 

 as we are aware, Professor Owen first applied the term Partheno- 

 genesis. This lecture, revised and enlarged, was subsequently 

 published.' It is with respect to this that a great injustice has been 

 committed. It has been, no doubt, unwittingly committed by men 

 who, while lauding or criticising Professor Weismann for his more 



* On Parthenogenesis. London : John Van Voorst, 1849. 



