134 NATURAL SCIENCE. Feb., 1893. 



tained to a non-banded armadillo, to which he gave the name of 

 Glypiodon. 



While dealing with the South American extinct mammals, Owen 

 was also occupied with bones and teeth from the caverns of New 

 South Wales, discovered by Sir Thomas Mitchell, and thus he laid 

 the foundation of the long series of memoirs on the extinct mammals 

 of Australia, for which he obtained materials from Dr. George 

 Bennett and many other indefatigable correspondents. Moreover, 

 in the midst of this activity, he was collecting materials for an 

 exhaustive work on the British fossil mammals, and his charming 

 volume on British Fossil Mammals and Birds appeared in 1846. 



Owen also took part in the discussion on the supposed mammalian 

 jaws discovered in the Stonesfield Slate, which attracted the notice 

 of Cuvier and many contemporaries from 1824 onwards; and it was 

 Owen who gave the first extended account of the Purbeck Mammalia 

 (collected by Mr. Beckles) in his Monograph of the Fossil Mammalia of 

 the Mesozoic Formations (Palaeont. Soc, 1871). The only known Lower 

 Mesozoic mammalian skull was also described by Owen from the 

 Karoo formation of Orange Free State in 1884 {Tritylodon). The 

 Cetacean fossils from the Red Crag formed the subject of a brief 

 Monograph of the British Fossil Cetacea from the Red Crag (Palaeont. Soc, 

 1870) ; and it must not be forgotten that Owen was the first to 

 recognise the affinities of the archaic Zeuglodon. 



Limits of space forbid more. These are merely a few of the more 

 salient features of Owen's contributions to our knowledge of the 

 Vertebrata. We need only add that it is very largely owing to the 

 prompt manner in which he interested himself in, and dealt with 

 every new fossil submitted to him, that the British Museum and the 

 Royal College of Surgeons are almost unique in their rich collections 

 of Vertebrate Palaeontology. 



A. Smith Woodward. 



