OBITUARY NOTICES OF FELLOWS DECEASED. 



RICHARD OWEN -was born at Lancaster on July 20, 1804. His 

 father, "whose name was also Richard, was engaged in business 

 connected with the West Indies. His mother's name was Catherine 

 Parrin. He was educated at the Grammar School at Lancaster 

 (where one of his schoolfellows was W. Whewell, afterwards Master 

 of Trinity), apprenticed to a surgeon of the name of Harrison in that 

 town, and studied surgery at the County Hospital. No evidence 

 can now be found for the statement which has appeared in many bio- 

 graphical notices that when a boy he went to sea as a midshipman, 

 nor is there any that at a later period he had an intention to enter 

 the medical service of the Navy, or applied for and obtained an 

 appointment, as has also been stated. 



In 1824 he matriculated at the University of Edinburgh, and had 

 the good fortune to attend the anatomical course of Dr. Barclay, 

 then approaching the close of a successful career as an extra- 

 academical lecturer, whose teaching was of a very superior order 

 to that of the third Monro, who, by virtue of hereditary influences, 

 happened at that time to be the University Professor of Anatomy. 

 In his work ' On the Nature of Limbs,' Owen refers to " the exten- 

 sive knowledge of comparative anatomy possessed by my revered 

 preceptor in anatomy, Dr. Barclay," and always spoke of him with 

 affectionate regard. 



He did not remain in Edinburgh to take his degree, but removed 

 to St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London, and passed the examina- 

 tion for the membership of the Royal College of Surgeons on 

 August 18, 1826. 



His first published scientific works were in the direction of surgical 

 pathology, being on encysted calculus of the urinary bladder and on 

 the effects of ligature of the internal iliac artery for the cure of 

 aneurism. 



At St. Bartholomew's Hospital he soon attracted the attention of 

 the celebrated Abernethy, through whose influence he obtained the 

 appointment of Assistant Conservator to the Hunterian Museum of 

 the Royal College of Surgeons. This was in 1827, and it caused him 

 to abandon the prospect of private practice, to which he had begun to 

 devote himself while living in Serle Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, for the 

 more congenial pursuit of comparative anatomy. The Conservator of 



TOL. LV. 6 



