132 NATURAL SCIENCE. Fes., 
the councils of the societies from whose publications they were 
extracted. 
To refer now more particularly to some of Owen’s principal con- 
tributions to knowledge of the vertebrata, we have.first to allude to 
the fishes, which did not attract so much notice as the higher groups. 
Besides his detailed descriptions in the Hunterian lectures and cata- 
logues, however, there are some of Owen’s writings that will ever 
remain memorable. His description of the African mud-fish 
Protopterus, for example, laid the foundations for the recognition of 
the Dipnoi by Miller, and it is interesting to note that Owen empha- 
sised the resemblance between the teeth of this fish and the fossils 
named Cevatodus long before anything was known of the affinities of 
the latter. He perceived the direct serial connection between the 
teleostean and ganoid fishes, and grouped them in one sub-class, the 
Teleostomi. Among fossils, too, he made several advances, and to 
him we owe the first information of the complex structure of the 
teeth of the Holoptychian fishes named Dendyodus—a structure, as 
Owen pointed out, only paralleled in the terrestrial extinct 
Labyrinthodonts. 
The discovery of the remarkably complex structure of the last- 
mentioned teeth, which Owen referred to a group of animals termed 
Labyrinthodonts, was one of his earliest contributions to knowledge 
of the extinct cold-blooded air-breathers. On discussing some 
portions of the skeleton later, he concluded that these animals were 
probably amphibia, and it is only quite lately that much evidence 
has been brought forward to indicate their higher rank. At the same 
time, Owen can scarcely be held responsible for the great frog-like 
‘“‘ restoration of Labyrinthodon”’ that is commonly ascribed to him; he 
merely interpreted the fragmentary bones as best he could, and 
the monstrosity just referred to was the unjustifiable work of a 
‘‘ populariser ”’ of scientific investigation. 
Among undoubted reptiles, Owen’s first important triumph was 
his recognition of the great group of Mesozoic land-reptiles, to which 
he gave the now-familiar name of Dinosauria. Hermann von Meyer, 
it is true, had already expressed some vague ideas on the subject of 
what he afterwards termed the ‘“‘ Pachypoda”’; but Owen, with the 
assistance of Mantell and Buckland, was the first to arrive at so 
much precision as could be attained in those days, and he continued 
to make the principal contributions to our knowledge of Dinosaurs 
for a period of nearly 40 years, describing Iguanodon, Hylaosaurus, 
Cetiosauvus, Omosaurus, Scelidosauvus, Megalosauvus, and more or less 
fragmentary remains of other genera. Even to the end, however, 
Owen failed to appreciate some of the fundamental characters of 
these animals,5 and there is now not much doubt (reasoning from 
5 Cf. Restoration of skull of Megalosaurus in Quart. Fourn. Geol. Soc., vol. xxxix., 
P 340 (1883). 
