may derive many and great benefits from the observations and 

 labours of the other. Owen could not have studied so long 

 and so closely as he has done the bony frame-work of animals, 

 if he must himself have gone to New Zealand and sought for 

 that single and very imperfect bone from which, being sent to 

 him, he first made knosvn the fact of a race of birds of gigantic 

 size and remarkable character having formerly existed in those 

 remote islands, and pointed out so accurately the kind of bird 

 it must have been, that subsequently, when bones of other 

 parts in considerable numbers, and ultimately a complete 

 skeleton, were discovered and brought to England, his deduc- 

 tions were fully and incontestably proved.* 



On the other hand, had the discoverer of this bone himself 

 sought to solve the problem of the kind of animal to which 

 it had belonged, it would have required vast research, in 

 comparing various parts of skeletons of very various kinds, 

 and a long study of the value and significance of seemingly 

 trifling modifications of form and structure, to have approxi- 

 mated at all to a solution of the question. 



Take another illustration. Everybody has seen, not only 

 in museums and the shops of dealers, but on the mantel- 

 piece and side-table, the shells of the Pearly Nautilus, shells 

 which for beauty of lustre and elegance of form are unsur- 

 passed ; while their chambered structure evinces important 

 differences in the living inhabitants from those of all other 

 shells. These shells are so plentiful as to be sold for a few 

 shillings only ; and two or three species are known to exist ; 

 while the extinct species, of which fossil remains are found, 

 often very perfect and beautiful, may be counted by hundreds. 

 Yet though the recent shells have been long known and im- 



* The bone referred to was a thigh bone broken off at both ends, fully 

 described and figured in the Transactions of the Zoological Society of London, 

 for 1839. Subsequently several distinct species have been made out by Pro- 

 fessor Owen from bones collected in New Zealand, all fully described in later 

 volumes of the same publication. 



