104 WOODWARD: PROFESSOR SIR RICHARD OWEN, K.C.B 



published as a distinct work. His memoirs on the extinct Marsupials 

 of Australia, and the fossil Mammals of England, the former con- 

 tributed to the Royal Society, and the latter to the Palaeontographical 

 Society, were afterwards issued as two volumes, 4to. His British 

 fossil Repitilia in the Palaeontographical volumes extend from 1848 

 to 1877, and embrace descriptions of 139 species. 



The fossil Reptilia of South Africa form a volume of the British 

 Museum Catalogues (4to, 1876), whilst his Memoir on the extinct 

 Sloth (MylodoH), 1842, and on the Megatherium (i860), &c, extend 

 Owen's researches to South America also. 



But whilst engaged with the Vertebrata, Owen had also a keen 

 interest for the Invertebrate classes of animals; one of his earliest 

 Memoirs being that on the anatomy of the animal of the Pearly 

 Nautilus, which appeared in 1832. and is certainly amongst the most 

 valuable and exhaustive of Owen's Monographs. 



For this, and for his description of "Certain Belemnites preserved 

 with a great portion of their soft parts in the < )x(ord clay at Christian- 

 Malford, Wilts" (Phil, Trans., 1844), he received the award of 

 a Royal Medal in 1846, from the Council of the Royal Society. 



In the Catalogue of the Fossil [nvertebrata in the Museum of 

 the College of Surgeons, Owen has also described upwards of 350 

 specimens of Ammonites collected by John Hunter in the last 

 century. 



In 1844, Prof. Owen communicated to the British Association 

 two papers by Madame Jeannette Power, detailing further experiments 

 and observations made by her on the living Argonauta argo, prefaced 

 by the remarks on the relation of the animal to its shell. He 

 also described Rossia, a sub-genus of Sepiola. 



In 1S48, Prof. Owen examined and dissected a portion of 

 Spintla reticulata and a unique but imperfect specimen of Spirula 

 peronii, and, in 1878, he again examined and described the specimen 

 from the Cumming Collection, which was in a more perfect state of 

 preservation than those brought home by H.M.S. " Samarang." 



Owen still adhered, in this memoir on Spirula, to his earlier- 

 expressed views of the hydrostatic nature of the camerated 

 cephalopod-shell, and that the siphuncle was related with the main- 

 tenance of the vitality of the shell * 



The establishment by Owen of the two great divisions of the 

 class Cephalopoda, the Tetrabranchiata, and the Dibranchiata, the 

 former embracing the Nautili, the Ammonites, and the Orthocerata ; 



'The contrary views expressed by Dr. H. Woodward, F.R.S., were originally communicated 

 to the British Association (1870), and afterwards published in the " Popular .Science Review," 

 vol. xi., No. xliii., pp. 113-120 (1872). 



