24 PROCEEDINtfS OF THE 



at Lancaster on the 20tli of July, 1804. He was educated at the 

 ,Xancaster Grammar School, and from there went to Edinburgh 

 to study medicine, matriculating in 1824. In 1825 he yisited 

 Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Cuvier and other dis- 

 tinguished anatomists of that day. In 1826 lie came to London 

 and attended the medicine school of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 

 where he acted as one of the prosectors to the celebrated 

 Abernethy. He was entered as a Member of the Royal College 

 of Surgeons in the same year, aud in 1827 he began practice on 

 his own account in Serle Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields. 



Young Owen had originally intended to enter the Navy 

 Medical Service, but he relinquished that idea on the advice of 

 Mr. Abernethy, who had discerned Owen's special ability as an 

 anatomist, and Avho, subsequently (in 1828), interested himself 

 in procuring for his old pupil the aj)ointment of Assistant 

 Curator of the Hunterian Museum at the College of Surgeons; 

 Mr. Clift, a near relative of Hunter, being the chief Curator. 

 The duties attached to the post included the preparation of a 

 descriptive Catalogue of the contents of the great and justly 

 celebrated collection. This colossal work Owen had the satis- 

 faction of completing, his labours being given to the world in a 

 series of nine monumental volumes whose production had occupied 

 him from 1828 up to 1856. 



In 1834 Owen was elected to the newly established chair of 

 Comparative Anatomy in St. Bartholomew's, and in 1836 he 

 succeeded Sir Charles Bell as Professor of Anatomy and Phy- 

 siology to the College of Surgeons. In the same year he was 

 also elected to the Hunterian Professorship, and on the death of 

 Mr. Clift, whose daughter he had married in 1835, Owen suc- 

 ceeded to the post of principal Curator of the Museum. 



During the progress of his work at the College of Surgeons, 

 Owen made very extensive series of dissections of animals 

 obtained from the Zoological Society's Gardens in Regent's Park, 

 tiie results being embodied in a large number of valuable papers 

 published in the Proceedings of the Zoological and other Societies. 

 The amount of work produced during this period was enormous ; 

 amongst some of the more important publications may be men- 

 tioned his ' Odontography,' the ' Lectures on Comparative 

 Anatomy,' ' The Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate 

 Skeleton,' ' On the nature of Limbs,' on 'Parthenogenesis,' on 

 ' The British Possil Reptiles,' on ' The Gigantic Possil Birds of 

 New Zealand,' on ' The Possil Mammals of Australia,' and on 

 'The Great Megatherium of America.' 



In addition to this great amount of work in his own field of 

 study, Owen sat on various Health and Sanitary Commissions 

 appointed by Government; and he was also one of the Com- 

 missioners for the Great Exhibition of 1851 ; and in all of these 

 capacities he rendered valuable services to the nation at large. 



In 1856 Owen's long connection with the College of Surgeons 

 was severed by his appointment as Superintendent of the 



