OWEN. 219 



type forms as ancestral to modern, degenerate, or 

 vestigial types, seems als\> to have been his cen- 

 tral thought in connection with Evolution. The 

 vast range of his knowledge in Comparative Anat- 

 omy and Osteology brought within his view series 

 of structures in all stages of usefulness, and espe- 

 cially those which were transitory or vestigial in 

 existing species, and persistent or well-developed 

 in extinct species. Thus in his essay on " The 

 Nature of Limbs," in 1849, ne wrote: " The arche- 

 typal idea was manifested long prior to the exist- 

 ence of those animal species that actually exemplify 

 it"; and in the same work we find the following 

 passage : " To what natural laws or secondary 

 causes the orderly succession and progression of 

 species may have been committed, we are, as yet, 

 ignorant." Again, in 1858, in his address before 

 the British Association, he spoke of the axiom " of 

 the continuous operation of creative power, or 

 ordained becoming of living things," indicating 

 that his belief in the discovery of natural law was 

 limited by his belief in the continuous operation 

 of the supernatural law. He cited the Apteryx 

 of New Zealand especially, with its excessively 

 degenerate wings, as shaking our confidence in the 

 theory of Special Creation. It thus appears that, 

 prior to the publication of Darwin's work, Owen 

 was an evolutionist in a limited degree, somewhat 

 in the manner of Buffon ; that is, in holding to the 

 production of many modern species by modifica- 



