Jan., 1893. OWEN. 17 



complete in a zoological sense, but the views on structure and 

 affinities therein expressed were considerably in advance of his 

 contemporaries. 



Continuing the work on the Hunterian specimens after the death 

 of Clift (1849), to whose position as curator he succeeded, Owen 

 issued many special catalogues of the collections, completing the 

 series in 1854. During his twenty years' curatorship of the College 

 of Surgeons, he so rearranged^and added to the Hunterian Collections 

 that in 1856 they filled ten times the original space allotted to them, 

 and were suitably housed and displayed in three large galleries specially 

 erected for the purpose. 



Owen became public lecturer in comparative anatomy at St. 

 Bartholomew's Hospital in 1834, and in 1836 succeeded Sir Charles 

 Bell as Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in the College of Sur- 

 geons. He was also appointed in the same year to be the first 

 " Hunterian Professor " at that institution. He became a Fellow of 

 the Royal Society in 1836, in 1839 was made LL.D. of Cam- 

 bridge, and in 1843 was elected F.R.C.S. Three years previously 

 he founded the Royal Microscopical Society, and became its first 

 President. In 1844 he was appointed to the Commission of Enquiry 

 on the Health of Towns, and reported on his birthplace, Lancaster. 

 He served also on commissions on the Health of the Metropolis 

 and on Smithfield Market, was president of one of the juries at the 

 Great Exhibition in 1851, and in 1855 filled the same position at the 

 Exposition Universelle, Paris. In 1S52, Owen was made D.C.L. of 

 Oxford, and received the same year " Le Prix Cuvier " from the 

 Institute of France, an honour peculiarly acceptable to one who had 

 so industriously and brilliantly followed in the footsteps of that 

 master. 



Owen's connection with the College of Surgeons ceased in 1856, 

 when he accepted the Superintendentship of the Natural History 

 Department of the British Museum. Once in this position, he 

 ceaselessly urged the necessity of more space for the growing collec- 

 tions, and in 1859 his " Report, with plans, of a National Museum 

 of Natural History " was ordered by the House of Commons to be 

 printed. Building operations eventually commenced in 1873, and the 

 Museum in Cromwell Road was finally completed in i88o. It is, 

 however, only fair to state that the building as finished but little 

 represents Owen's ideas ; one has only to look at his report and plans 

 to recognise his knowledge of what was required, and to see how 

 much the arrangement of the building has been sacrificed to archi- 

 tectural peculiarities. In recognition of his great services to science, 

 Owen received the honDur of knighthood on his retirement from the 

 Natural History Museum in 1884. 



Richard Owen was a giant, both in stature and in intellect, 

 and the best monument that can be raised to his memory already 

 exists in the Palaeontological Galleries of the British Museum. Label 



c 



