VI 



Museum, however, he encountered the difficulties wLich are nearly 

 ul\v;i\\s experienced by an outsider suddenly imported into the midst 

 of an existing establishment without any very well-defined position. 

 The Principal Librarian, Panizzi, was a man of strong will and 

 despotic character, and little disposed to share any of his authority 

 with another. The heads of the departments, especially Dr. J. E. 

 Gray, Keeper of Zoology, preferred to maintain the independence to 

 which they were accustomed within their own sphere of action, and 

 1o have no intermediary between them and the Trustees, except the 

 Principal Librarian, who though perhaps with little sympathy, had 

 jilso, from lack of special knowledge, but little power of interference 

 in detail. Hence Owen found himself in a situation the duties of 

 which were little more than nominal, probably for him the best that 

 could have been, as it gave his indomitable industry full play in the 

 directions for which his talents were best fitted, and with the magni- 

 ficent material in the collections of the Museum at his command, he set 

 to work with great vigour upon a renewed series of 'researches, the 

 results of which for many years taxed the resources of most of the 

 scientific societies of London to publish. It followed from the nature 

 of the materials that came most readily to his hand, and the smaller 

 facilities for dissection now available than those afforded by the 

 College of Surgeons, that his original work was henceforth mainly 

 confined to osteology, and chiefly to that of extinct animals. The 

 rich treasures of the palaeontological department were explored, 

 named and described, as were also the valuable additions which 

 poured in from various parts of the world, attracted in many cases 

 by Owen's great reputation. The long series of papers on the 

 gigantic extinct Birds of New Zealand, begun in the year 1839, at the 

 College of Surgeons, with the receipt of the fragment of a femur, 

 upon which the first evidence of their existence was based, was now 

 continued at intervals as fresh materials arrived. The Marsupials 

 of Australia, the Edentates of South America, the Triassic Reptiles 

 from South Africa, the Archoeopteryx from Solenhofen, the Mesozoiu 

 Mammals from the Purbeck, the Aborigines of the Andaman Islands, 

 the Cave remains, human and otherwise, of the South of France, 

 the Cetacea of the Suffolk Crag, the Gorilla and other Anthropoid 

 Apes, the Dodo, Great Auk, and Chiromys, and many other remark- 

 able forms of animal life were all subjects of elaborate memoirs from 

 his untiring pen. These were adorned in every case with a profu- 

 sion of admirable illustrations, drawn as often as possible of the full 

 size of nature. His contributions to the publications of the Palaeon to- 

 graphical Society, mainly upon the extinct Reptiles of the British 

 Isles, fill more than a thousand pages, and are illustrated by nearly 

 three hundred plates. 



He now also found leisure to perform the pious duty of rindicat- 



