617 



OWEN, RICHARD. 



OWEN, ROBERT. 



613 



would have even been more extensively employed in hia researches, 

 had not failing eye-sight warned the professor to desist. 



In 1836 Mr. Owen was appointed to succeed Sir Charles Bell as 

 Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons. In the courses 

 of lectures which he delivered in this capacity, an opportunity was 

 afforded him of sy tematiaing and arranging the vast mass of information 

 which he had collected on the subject of the structure of the animal 

 kingdom. These lectures embraced the whole animal kingdom, and 

 a part of them, including the Invertebrate animals and Fishes, has 

 been published under the title of ' Lectures on Comparative Anatomy.' 

 A second edition of these lectures was published in 1853. 



Anatomical and physiological researches are necessary to the per- 

 fecting any systematic arrangement of organic beings, and Professor 

 Owen's anatomical researches enabled him from time to time to suggest 

 improvements in the classification of the animal kingdom. In referring 

 to hia anatomical labours we have spoken of their influence on the 

 science of zoology. In his series of articles in the ' Cyclopaedia of 

 Anatomy and Physiology,' and in his ' Lectures,' the application of 

 his anatomical knowledge to the classification of animals is more 

 particularly developed. Ho has however published papers on the 

 classification of special families, as his ' Outlines of the Classification 

 of Marsupialia ;' and his paper ' On the Entozoa, and on the Structural 

 Differences existing among them ; including Suggestions for thfir 

 Distribution into other Classes.' 



But whatever may be Professor Owen's merits as an anatomist and 

 zoologist, he has probably reaped more laurels as a palaeontologist 

 than in any other department of research. John Hunter had clearly 

 apprehended the necessity of studying extinct animals, in order to 

 complete the classification of animals, and Owen was brought in con- 

 tact in Hunter's Museum with a large number of specimens of the 

 remains of extinct animals. He commenced his studies of these 

 remains at a time when Cuvier's ' Ossemens Fossiles ' was beginning 

 to produce an impression upon the scientific world. To follow in the 

 footsteps of Cuvier was the determination of the young naturalist, 

 and posterity will be the judge as to how far the pupil outstripped the 

 master in this line of research. We have seen how he obtained a 

 profound knowledge of the anatomy of recent animals, and this was 

 applied with wonderful skill to the unravelling the structure of the 

 remains of extinct animals. His palaeontographical researches present 

 a series of most brilliant discoveries. Extinct creatures of the most 

 difficult structures have been built up with unerring skill, and 

 where only minute fragments have been at first examined, subsequent 

 researches have confirmed the truth of his previsions founded on 

 these slight materials. The footmarks of the Cheirotherium on the 

 New Red Sandstone were rightly judged to be the impressions of a 

 gigantic Batrachian. A fragment of the femur of an unknown 

 animal from New Zealand was immediately referred to the class of 

 Birds, though no bird so large had hitherto been known to exist on 

 the earth. His palajontologicaJ researches include all the classes of ver- 

 tebrate animals. The British extinct Mammalia and Birds have had a 

 special volume devoted to them in ' History of British Mammals and 

 Birds,' published in 1846. This work contains the description of 

 nearly a hundred and fifty species, a large number of which hafl been 

 detected and described by the author himself. The Mylodon and 

 Olyptodon, two gigantic forms of edentate animals from America, 

 were first put together and described by Professor Owen, and their 

 skeletons exist in the Museum of the College of Surgeons to attest his 

 skill. An account of the Ulyptodon is given in the Catalogue of the 

 Museum, and a separate work was devoted to the Mylodon, entitled 

 ' Description of the Skeleton of an extinct gigantic Sloth (Mylodon 

 robwtut, Ow.), with observations on the Osteology, Natural Affinities, 

 and Probable Habits of the Megatheroid Animals in general,' London, 

 1842. 



His researches in fossil birds have been rewarded by the discovery 

 of the great family of Dinornidce. An imperfect skeleton of the 

 Dinomit yigantcu* has been set up in the Museum of the College of 

 Surgeons, whilst more recently a perfect skeleton of another species 

 of these birds, the Dinornit elephantopus, has been set up at the 

 British Museum. Descriptions of these birds were published in the 

 ' Transactions ' of the Zoological Society of London. 



The excessive richness of certain British strata in the remains of 

 fossil reptiles induced the British Association for the Advancement 

 of Science to call on Professor Owen for a report on this subject, and 

 in the volumes for 1839 and 1841 accordingly are two reports by 

 him. These reports contain more particularly an account of those 

 Saurian reptiles, of which the Ichthyoianrui, Plciiosaurua, the Iguan- 

 odon, Pterodactyls, are types. Since the publication of these reports 

 Professor Owen has published, in the works of the I'aUcoutographiual 

 Society, monographs ' On the Fossil Chelonia of the London Clay, 

 and other Tertiary Deposits,' 1846; 'On the Fossil Ophidia of the 

 British Tertiary Formations,' 1851; 'On the Fossil Chelonia of the 

 British Chalk Formation,' 1851; 'On the Fossil Chelonian Reptiles 

 of the Wealden Clays and Purbeck Limestones,' 18S3. Besides these 

 he has also published a ' History of the British Fossil Reptiles,' 4to, 

 parti I. to V., 184851. 



There is still one other department of natural history that has been 

 developed and established by the genius of Owen. Oken had asserted 

 that the typical form of the xkcleton of the higher animals was the 



vertebra. [OKEN.] Geoffroy St. Hilaire, Cams, and others, had worked 

 out thia idea in considerable detail. It had however been rejected by 

 Cuvier, and no one of eminence had attended to the subject in thia 

 country. Owen determined to investigate the whole question for him- 

 self, and soon discovered that in the labours of the transcendental 

 anatomists there lay a great truth. He constructed for himself a 

 typical vertebra, and with this instrument proceeded to investigate 

 the skeleton f the vertebrate animals. The result was a report to 

 the British Association ' On the fundamental type and homologies of 

 the vertebrate skeleton." In this paper he first used the word ' homo- 

 logy," as expressive of parts having the same relations throughout any 

 series of organic beings. This subject ho further developed in a work 

 entitled ' 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," 

 (London, 1848). A popular exposition of this subject was given in a 

 smaller work entitled ' Oil the Nature of Limbs," (1849). So completely 

 did he vindicate the discovery of Oken, which had hitherto been 

 looked on with suspicion, that the recognition of a general plan in 

 the structure of the skeleton of the vertebrata, has become one of 

 the fundamental positions of zoological science. It is not however 

 on these researches alone that Professor Owen's claims rest to be 

 regarded as a philosophical anatomist. He was one of the first in 

 this country to recognise the law of Von Baer, of the progressive 

 development of the animal in its growth from the general to the 

 special, and has demonstrated its existence in his papers on the 

 growth of the young of the higher animals. He first promulgated 

 the law of vegetative or irrelative repetition of parts in the auiiual 

 kingdom, and has by hia writings contributed largely to the mainte- 

 nance of that law of unity of organisation which is now the guiding 

 principle of the naturalist in his investigations of the power of 

 animal life. lu his general views of the existence of animal life on 

 the globe, Professor Owen has maintained that the same law is observ- 

 able in the successive appearance of'animals on the earth as in the 

 development of each particular species, and that there is in the history 

 of creation a progress from the general to the special ; that the lower 

 and more incomplete forms of animals were first created, and that the 

 higher forms have been the last to appear upon the surface of the 

 earth. 



A complete list of the writings and works of Professor Owen will bo 

 found in the ' Bibliographia Zoologiaj et Geologise,' published by the 

 Ray Society. An extended criticism of his works appeared in the 

 ' Quarterly Review,' in two articles, in 1854 and 1855. 



After occupying the position of Hunterian Professor at the College 

 of Surgeons for twenty years, Professor Owen was offered by the 

 British Museum the position of chief of the natural history depart- 

 ment of that great establishment. In connection with this post he 

 will still deliver lectures on natural history, and a first course on 

 palteoutology will be delivered at the School of Mines in Jermyn-street 

 during the ensuing spring (1857). 



Professor Owen has received numerous acknowledgments of his 

 scientific merits. In 1S4S he received the Royal Medal, and in 1851 

 the Copley Medal of tue Royal Society. From our own government 

 he has received a pension, and Her Majesty has granted him a residence 

 at one of the royal houses in Richmond Park. The King of Prussia 

 bestowed upon him on the death of Oersted in 1851 the distinction of 

 " Chevalier of the Order of Merit." Oxford has conferred on him her 

 D.C.L., and Edinburgh her LL.D., whilst he has been elected a foreign 

 member of almost every distinguished society in Europe and America 

 that cultivates the natural sciences. 



In 1835 Professor Owen married the only daughter of hia friend and 

 fellow curator, Mr. Clift, by whom he has one son living. 



Amidst his laborious scientific labours, Professor Owen has devoted 

 much attention to the practical application of the laws of life to the 

 preservation of the health of the community. He was one of the 

 commissioners of inquiry into the health of towns, and into Smithfield 

 market. He reported to the first on tlio sanitary condition of his 

 native town of Lancaster, and his exertions in this direction have given 

 a most important impulse to the subject of sanitary reform. He also 

 took an active interest in the establishment 6f the Great Exhibition in 

 1851, and was a member of one of the committees and a juryman. 



*OWEN, ROBERT, the propouuder of new social and some other 

 theories, was born at Newton in Montgomeryshire, in 1771. His 

 parents were in a humble condition of life, but they enabled him to 

 acquire such an education that when he left the elementary school of 

 his native town at ten years of age he had acted as under-teacher for 

 three years. Until he was fourteen he was employed in drapers' shops 

 in his native town and at Stamford. He then procured a situation iu 

 London, where he distinguished himself by his talents for business, 

 and at eighteen became a partner in a cotton-mill on a small scale. He 

 was successful in this, and then removed to the Chorlton Mills, near 

 Manchester, where he was equally prosperous. In 1801 he married 

 the daughter of David Dale, a manufacturer of Glasgow, who had 

 eatablished in 1784 a cotton-factory near Lanark, now called New 

 Lanark, on the banks of the Clyde. In this factory not only cotton- 

 spinning but other connected branches of the manufacture were 

 carried on, and at one time as many as 4000 persons were settled here 

 in connection with it. Soon after his marriage Mr. Owen sold the 



