Annual Report of the Council, 235 



recipient of many honors from learned societies. In our 

 own country he was elected a member of the Royal Society 

 in 1851. In 1854 he was awarded a royal medal for his 

 *' Memoir on the Molecular Constitution of Organic Bases." 

 He was elected one of the honorary members of the Society 

 on January 23rd, 1866, J. B. 



On the 1 8th of December, 1892, one of the oldest and 

 most eminent of the scientific veterans of our country, 

 Sir Richard Owen, closed his brilliant career at the age 

 of but little under ninety years. He was born at Lancaster 

 on July 20, 1804, and received his early education in the 

 grammar school of the same town. At a later period, 

 selecting medicine for his profession, he matriculated at 

 Edinburgh, but studied practical medicine in the London 

 Hospital of St. Bartholomew's at the time when the " mild 

 Abernethy" of the poet was the ruling spirit of that dis- 

 tinguished school. Whilst there, in 1826, he wrote his first 

 memoir,on the subject of Urinary Calculi, and, on concluding 

 his preparatory studies, he became a Medical Practitioner 

 in London. Previous to this the Government had purchased 

 the fine collection of anatomical preparations made by 

 John Hunter and then in the care of the College of 

 Surgeons, but uncatalogued and unarranged. Like most 

 young practitioners, Owen had abundance of leisure, and 

 at the suggestion of Abernethy he undertook the task of 

 cataloguing the Hunterian collection. In 1830 the newly- 

 established Zoological Society of London held its first 

 meeting, at which Owen read a paper on the " Anatomy of 

 the Ourang Outang," followed two years later by the 

 memoir which first gave a prominent distinction to the 

 young naturalist. For the first time a specimen of the 

 pearly nautilus had fortunately been captured in the 

 eastern seas, which shell, containing its hitherto unknown 

 animal, carefully preserved in alcohol, was placed in 



