IV 



organs. The close study of the bones and teeth of existing animals 

 was of extreme importance to him in his long continued and labor- 

 ious researches into fossil forms ; and, following iu the footsteps of 

 Cuvier, he fully appreciated and deeply profited by the dependence of 

 the study of the living in elucidating the dead, and vice versa. Per- 

 haps the best example of this is to be seen in his elaborate memoir 

 on the Mylodon, published in 1842, entitled ' Description of the 

 Skeleton of an Extinct Gigantic Sloth (Mylodon robustus, Owen), 

 with Observations on the Osteology, Natural Affinities, and Probable 

 Habits of the Megatheroid Quadrupeds in General,' a masterpiece 

 both of anatomical description and of reasoning and inference. A 

 comparatively popular outcome of some of his work in this direction 

 w;s the volume on 'British Fossil Mammals and Birds,' published in 

 1844-46, as a companion to the works of Yarrell, Bell, and others on 

 the recent fauna of our island. He also wrote, assisted by Dr. 

 S. P. Woodward, the article " Palaeontology " for the ' Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica,' which, when afterwards published in a separate form, 

 reached a second edition in 1861. 



To this first period of his life belong the courses of Hunterian 

 Lectures, given annually at the College of Surgeons, each year on a 

 fresh subject, and each year the means of bringing before the world 

 new and original discoveries which attracted, even fascinated, large 

 audiences, and did much to foster an interest in the science among 

 cultivated people of various classes and professions. They also added 

 greatly to the scientific renown of the College in which they were 

 given. To this period also belong the development and popularisa- 

 tion of those transcendental views of anatomy the conception of 

 creation according to types, and the construction cf the Vertebrate 

 archetype views which had great attractions and even uses in their 

 day, and which were accepted by many, at all events as working 

 hypotheses around which facts could be marshalled, and out of 

 which grew a methodical system of anatomical terminology, much of 

 which has survived to the present time. The recognition of homology 

 and its distinction from analogy, which was so strongly insisted on 

 by Owen, marked a distinct advance in philosophical anatomy. 

 These generalisations, first announced in lectures at the College of 

 Surgeons, were afterwards embodied in two works : ' The Archetype 

 and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton' (1848) and 'The 

 Nature of Limbs ' (1849). 



The contributions which Owen made to our knowledge of the 

 structure of Invertebrate animals nearly all belong to the earlier 

 period of his career, one of the most important being his admirable 

 and exhaustive memoir on the Pearly Nautilus founded on the dissec- 

 tion of a specimen of this, at that time exceedingly rare, animal, sent 

 to him in spirit by his friend Dr. George Bennett, of Sydney. This 



