December 22, 1892J 



NA TURE 



181 



Senate granted the lecturers the utmost Hberty, and experi- 

 mental methods, which could not be learned from books, 

 had been practised at the University for more than a 

 century. Galileo had many opportunities for the develop- 

 ment of his genius, both in the lecture-room and in the 

 home, in the preparation of scientific publications, and in 

 the workshops of scientific instrument-makers both in 

 Padua and Venice. To Venice he frequently went, attracted 

 thither by the means it afforded him for study ; by that 

 grand arsenal which had already been sung by Dante, 

 and which in his reputed Dialogues is spoken of by 

 Galileo with admiration ; but above all by the advantages 

 he derived from scientific intercourse with eminent 

 men who resided in the dominion. The culmi- 

 nating point of the discourse was naturally reached 

 when the orator had to deal with the invention 

 of the telescope, and with the astronomical dis- 

 coveries made by means of it, the immediate result of 

 which was the recall of Galileo to Tuscany. This did 

 not aid Galileo in his glorious career, or help to protect 

 him from the attacks which were for a long time made on 

 him by invidious adversaries. Even some of his own 

 servants changed at once to implacable and dangerous 

 enemies, and at last he was involved in all the miseries 

 which sprang from the memorable lawsuit. This led the 

 orator to recall the fact that when the clouds assumed 

 their most threatening aspect, the Venetian Republic, 

 forgetting with real magnanimity whatever resentment it 

 might have felt at Galileo's abandonment of his chair at 

 Padua, offered to re-appoint him, and to print at Venice 

 the work which had brought upon him so much trouble. 

 He said also that a pleasant memory of Padua must have 

 passed through the mind of the prisoner of the Holy 

 Office, when there came to him his only comfort, the 

 message from the favourite of his childhood, the nun who 

 in Padua had tenderly cared for him during the first ten 

 years of his youth. 



After Prof. Favaro's oration discourses were delivered 

 by the foreign delegates, Holmgren, Fayrer, Darwin, 

 Tisserand, Lampe, Keller, Foerster, Sohncke, Biasing, 

 Lemcke, Farey, Lanczy, .Schmourio, and by Italian 

 delegates, x\ardi-Dei, Mantovani-Orsetti, and Del Lungo. 

 Then followed the conferring of University honours, of 

 which seven had been set apart by the Council 

 for seven men of science, one for each nation, all 

 distinguished for their devotion to the studies in 

 which Galileo excelled, viz. Schiaparelli, Helmholtz, 

 Thomson. Newcomb, Tisserand, Bredichir, and Gyldea. 

 The degree of philosophy and letters was given to the 

 Minister Martini ; of natural philosophy, and philosophy 

 and letters, to the leading delegates. The ceremony was 

 closed by the inauguration of a commemorative tablet in 

 the large hall. 



Of the other festivals connected with the celebration it 

 would be out of place to speak here, and it will be better 

 to add a list of the publications which have been issued 

 on the occasion. The oration read in the Great Hall by 

 Prof. Favaro has been published, with the addition of 

 twenty-five facsimiles of documents containing the vari- 

 ous decrees of the Senate concerning Galileo, the date of 

 the early prelections given by him at regular intervals, 

 several autographic records of Galileo, chosen in order 

 to give a more exact idea of what are the most precious 

 materials for his biography, the frontispieces of the vari- 

 ous publications issued by Galileo, or relating to the 

 time of his sojourn in Padua, the geometric and mili- 

 tary compass, the writing presenting the telescope to 

 the Doge, and the first observations of the satellites 

 of Jupiter. A portrait of the great philosopher, from 

 a painting which represents him at the age of forty, taken 

 in 1604, is prefixed. 



By favour of the University there have also been pub- 

 lished two other works, one containing all the notices of 

 the studies at Padua in 1592, the other proving which 



NO. 1208. VOL. 47I 



was the house inhabited by Galileo and the place in 

 which he made his astronomical observations. The 

 ancient Academy of Padua, among whose founders 

 Galileo is numbered, has issued a publication in which 

 are collected several works dedicated to his memory; and 

 the students of the University have sought to perpetuate 

 the remembrance of this festival by the publication of a 

 " unique number," bringing together all the documents 

 relating to the sojourn of Galileo in Padua, collected from 

 all quarters. These publications will serve as suitable 

 memorials of a great and most interesting celebration. 



Antonio Favaro. 



SIR RICHARD OWEN. 

 T T is with great regret that we record the death of Sir 

 -*■ Richard Owen He died on Sunday, after a lingering 

 illness, at Sheen Lodge, Richmond Park, in his eighty- 

 ninth year. In publishing his portrait in the series of 

 " Scientific Worthies '' ( N ature, vol. xxii. p. 577) we have 

 already presented an estimate of his work and of his 

 place in the history of science. It is only necessary now, 

 therefore, to recall some of the leading facts of his 

 career. 



He was bom at Lancaster on July 20, 1804, and received 

 his early education at the grammar school of his native 

 place. Afterwards he matriculated at the University of 

 Edinburgh as a medical student. In 1825 he joined tha 

 medical school of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, 

 and in 1826 he took his diploma at the Royal College of 

 Surgeons. His professional studies having been com- 

 pleted, he began to practise in Serle Street, Lincoln's Inn 

 Fields ; but the bent of his mind was towards purely scien- 

 tific investigation, and he soon had a good opportunity of 

 exercising his powers. Dr. Abernethy, with whom he had 

 acted at St. Bartholomew's as a dissector, had recognized 

 his ability ; and, in accordance with the advice of this 

 famous surgeon, he was invited in 1828 to undertake the 

 task of cataloguing the Hunterian collection at the Royal 

 College of Surgeons. The invitation was accepted, and 

 in 1830 the first catalogue of the invertebrate animals in 

 spirits was published. In the same year Owen read at 

 the first meeting of the Zoological Society's committee of 

 Science a valuable paper on the anatomy of the orang- 

 utan, and afterwards he made many important contri- 

 butions to the Society's Transactions and Proceedings. 

 He was also well known as a reader of papers before the 

 Medical Society of St. Bartholomew's and the Medical 

 and Chirurgical Society of London. In 1832 appeared 

 his well-known essay on the Pearly Nautilus {Nautilus 

 Poinpilius), in which he gave most striking proof of his 

 power of interpreting the facts of natural history in a 

 thoroughly philosophical spirit. 



Before he was thirty years of age Owen had achieved 

 so good a reputation that in 1834 he was appointed to 

 the newly-established chair of comparative anatomy at 

 St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Two years afterwards he 

 succeeded Sir Charles Bell as professor of anatomy and 

 physiology at the Royal College of Surgeons, and he was 

 elected to the newly-established Hunterian professorship 

 at the Hunterian Museum. He also became conservator 

 of the Hunterian Museum on the death of Mr. Clift, 

 whose daughter he had married. He had gradually been 

 withdrawing from the practice of his profession, and 

 ended by devoting the whole of his time and energy to 

 scientific work. 



His connection with the Royal College of Surgeons 

 lasted for twenty years, and during this period he 

 achieved results which placed him in the front rank of 

 original investigators. In the article to which we have 

 referred we have already indicated the nature and import- 

 ance of these results, and need not go over the same 

 ground again. It must suffice to mention the comple- 

 tion, in five volumes, of his catalogue of the Hunterian 



