238 Ajimial Report of the Council. 



1846, he presented to the British Association a report "On 

 the fundamental type and Homologies of the Vertebrate 

 Skeleton," and he carried out the same dominant idea in 

 1848 and 1849, when he successively published his two 

 volumes "On the Archetype and Homologies of the 

 Vertebrate Skeleton, with tables of the synonyms of 

 the Vertebral Elements and Bones of the head of 

 Fishes, Reptiles, Birds, Mammals, and Man," followed by a 

 similar treatment of the rest of the skeleton in his volume 

 "On the Nature of Limbs." Ingenious as his arguments 

 and illustrations were it cannot be said that his views have 

 met with general acceptance. From this time onwards 

 Owen poured forth, from year to year, so vast a succession 

 of memoirs, reports, articles for encyclopedias, &c., some on 

 fossils, others on recent objects, but chiefly on vertebrate 

 creatures, as to baffle all comprehension as to how and when 

 one man could accomplish so much detailed work. A mere list 

 of these separate productions would occupy at least a dozen 

 pages of the volume containing this notice. At one time he 

 is devoting his energies to the anatomy of the Monkeys. 

 At another he is preparing a descriptive and illustrated 

 catalogue of the P'ossil remains of Mammals and Birds con- 

 tained in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. 

 Now it is the anatomy of various recent Sloths and of 

 Mylodon and the Megatherium, two gigantic fossil forms of 

 the same group of semi-arboreal animals. At another time 

 the recent Armadillos are engaging his attention along 

 with the South American Glyptodon, an enormous extinct 

 creature closely allied to the Armadillos. Indeed it is 

 difficult to name any one of the great types of animal forms, 

 recent or extinct, which he has not made the subjects of his 

 minute studies. The great Saurians from the Oolitic and 

 Liassic beds were always favourite objects of his investiga- 

 tions. When the first specimens of the Dinornis, the gigantic 

 Ostrich of New Zealand, came to England he at once gave to 



