(893. OWEN. 131 
be said to have contributed most to the demolition of the narrow 
Cuvierian views; when dealing with animals closely related to those 
now living, his correctness of interpretation was usually assured— 
when treating of more remote types he could do little more than 
guess, unless tolerably complete skeletons happened to be at his 
disposal. Thefragmentary thigh-bone of Dinornis, brought to him in 
1839, sufficed for the great anatomist to demonstrate that gigantic 
flightless birds had once existed in New Zealand; and the single 
fragment of the end of the lower jaw of Diprotodon from New South 
Wales was enough to enable him to conceive the former existence 
of that huge wombat-like animal in Australia. When, however, 
the molar teeth and femur of Dz¢pyvotodon were first discovered, 
Owen failed to recognise their relationships and described them 
as evidence of a ‘ Dinotherioid or Mastodontoid pachyderm” in 
Australia; and the restoration of the ‘‘great horned lizard” of 
Queensland (Megalania) has proved even more unfortunate, the back- 
bone only belonging to a lizard, the head and tail to a tortoise, and 
the toes toa marsupial quadruped. The supposed tooth of a monkey 
from the Eocene of Woodbridge soon proved to belong to a primitive 
hoofed animal; and there is no longer any doubt that the comparison 
of Steveognathus, from the Oolites, with the Ungulata is based upon a 
complete misapprehension. In short, Owen’s work on fragmentary 
fossils has demonstrated that the principles of comparative anatomy 
are very different from those inferred by Cuvier from his limited field 
of observation ; and the discoveries of Leidy, Marsh, Cope, Scott, and 
Osborn in America have finally led to a new era that Owen only began 
to foresee clearly in his later days. 
Throughout this work, one of the most striking features was the 
persistence with which Owen followed each subject until he had 
exhausted all available material. Impressed, in the earlier part of his 
career, with the researches of Retzius and others on the minute 
structure of teeth, he discussed and extended these observations until 
he had studied in detail the teeth of every known division of the 
vertebrates, living and extinct ; and thus was produced his unrivalled 
work on Odontogvaphy (1840-45). He began his researches on British 
fossil mammals, birds, and reptiles, also, by contributing exhaustive 
summaries of all known material to the Reports of the British 
Association ; and, although his results were usually published in small 
instalments in scientific serials, he nearly always arranged that the 
various groups of papers should follow in connected sequence, and in 
many cases he had them reprinted in the form of successive sheets of 
separate works, which appeared as Fesearches on the Fossil Remains of the 
Extinct Mammals of Australia, with a notice of the Extinct Marsupials of 
England (2 vols., 1877), Memoivs on the Extinct Wingless Birds of New 
Zealand (2 vols., 1879), and A History of British Fossil Reptiles (1849-84). 
This method is convenient for purposes of reference, but it naturally 
led to continual disagreement between the author of the memoirs and 
K2 
