FIELD STUDY IN ORNITHOLOGY. 483 



by the same species under changed circumstances, liow tliey can be 

 better accounted for than by hereditary transmitted instinct, I do not 

 see. I mean such cases as the ground-nesting Bidunculus in Samoa 

 having saved itself from extinction, since the introduction of cats, by 

 roosting and nesting in trees; or the extraordinary acquired habit of 

 the bhickeap in the Canaries, observed by Dr. Lowe, of piercing the 

 calyx of HihLscus yo.sasineiisis — an introduced plant — to attract insects, 

 for which he quietly sits M'aiting. So the lying low of a covey of par- 

 tridges under an artificial kite would seem to be a transmitted instinct 

 from a far-off ancestry not yet lost ; for many generations of partridges, 

 I fear, must have passed since the last kite hovered over the fore- 

 fathers of an English partridge, save in very few parts of the island. 



I can not conclude without recalling that the past year has witnessed 

 the severance of the last link with the pre-Darwinian naturalists in the 

 death of Sir Eichard Owen. Though never himself a field-worker or 

 the discoverer of a single animal living or extinct, his career extends 

 over the whole history of palteontology. I say palteontology, for he was 

 not a geologist in the sense of studying the order, succession, area, 

 structure, and disturbance of strata. But he accunuilated facts on the 

 fossil remains that came to his hands, till he won the fame of being the 

 greatest comparative anatomist of the age. To him we owe the build- 

 ing up of the skeletons of the giant IHnornithidw and many other of 

 the perished forms of the gigantic sloths, armadillos, and mastodons 

 of South America, Australia, and Europe. He was himself a colossal 

 worker, and he never worked for popularity. He had lived and worked 

 too long before the Victorian age to accept readily the doctrines which 

 have revolutionized that science, though none has had a larger share 

 in accunndating the fiicts, the combination of which of necessity pro- 

 duced that transformation. But, though he clung fon<lly to his old idea 

 of the archetype, no man did more than Owen to explode the rival 

 theories of both Wernerians and Huttonians, till the controversies of 

 Plutoniaiis and Neptunians came to us from the far past with as little 

 to move our interest as the blue and green controversies of Constanti- 

 nople. 



Xor can we forget that it is to vSir Richard's indomitable perseverance 

 that we owe the magnificent palace which contains the national collec- 

 tions, in Cromwell Road. For many years he fought the battle almost 

 alone. His demand for a building of two stories, covering 5 acres, was 

 denounced as audacious. The scheme was pronounced foolish, crazy, 

 and extravagant; but, after twenty years' struggle, he was victorious, 

 and in 1872 the act was passed which gave not 5, but more than 7 acres 

 for the puipose. Owen retired from its direction in 1883, having 

 achieved the crowning victory of his life. Looking back in his old age 

 on the scientific achievements of the past, he fully recognized the pros- 

 pects of still further advances, and observed, " The known is very small 



