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the Museum at that time was William Clift, John Hunter's last and 

 most devoted pupil and assistant, under whose faithful guardian- 

 ship the collection had been most carefully preserved during the 

 long interval between the death of its founder and its transference to 

 the custody of the College of Surgeons. From him, Owen early imbibed 

 an enthusiastic reverence for his great master, which was continually 

 augmented with the closer study of his collection and works, which 

 now became the principal duty of his life. In 1830 and 1831 he 

 visited Paris, where he attended the lectures of Cnvier and Geoffrey 

 St. Hilaire, and worked in the dissecting rooms and public galleries 

 of the Jardin des Plantes. In 1835 he married Cliffs only daughter, 

 Caroline, and in 1842 was associated with him as joint Conservator 

 of the Museum. On Cliffs retirement soon after, he became sole 

 Conservator, with Mr. J. T. Qnekett as Assistant. 



He was appointed Hnnterian Professor of Comparative Anatomy 

 and Physiology in 1835, an office which he held until his retirement 

 from the College in 1856, and from which he took the title of " Pro- 

 fessor Owen," by which he Tvas far more widely known than by the 

 knightly addition of his later years. 



Until the year 1852, when the Queen gave him the charming 

 cottage called Sheen Lodge in Richmond Park, where he resided to 

 the end of his life, he occupied small apartments within the building 

 of the College of Surgeons ; these, however inconvenient they might 

 be in some respects, furnished him with unusual facilities for pursuing 

 his work by night as well as day in the museum, dissecting rooms, 

 and library, of that institution. 



Owen's life of scientific activity may be divided into two periods, 

 during each of which the nature of his work was determined to a 

 considerable extent by the circumstances by which he was environed. 

 Each of these periods embraces a term of very nearly thirty years. 

 The first, from 1827 to 1856, was spent at the Royal College of Sur- 

 geons; the second, from 1856 to 1884, in the British Museum. It was 

 in the first that he mainly made his great reputation as an ana- 

 tomist, having utilised to the fullest possible extent the opportunities 

 which were placed in his way by the care of the Hunterian Museum. 

 For many years he worked in that institution under the happiest of 

 auspices. From the routine and drudgery which always take up so 

 large a portion of the time of a conscientious museum curator, he 

 was relieved by the painstaking, methodical, William Clift ; the far 

 more gifted son-in-law being thus able to throw himself to his heart's 

 content into the higher work of the office. This at first mainly consisted 

 in the preparation of that monumental ' Descriptive and Illustrated 

 Catalogue of the Physiological Series of Comparative Anatomy,' 

 founded npon Hunter's preparations, largely added to by Owen 

 himself, which was published in five quarto volumes between the 



