SKETCH OF RICHARD OWEN. 265 



of the new School of Agriculture. Its discipline he had planned 

 to place in the hands of a representative senate of students. The 

 lower classes were to be divided into sections, each numbering ten 

 to fifteen, and each section to be under the direct supervision of 

 some member of the senior class. 



Dr. Owen's scientific publications were very numerous. His 

 favorite subjects were the significance of the contour of continents 

 and the causes of earthquake action. His mind was especially 

 attracted to the study of hidden causes in the development of the 

 earth that is, to those causes which we have not yet learned to 

 associate with their effects. This difficult line of research involved 

 a vast amount of reading in every tongue, and the breadth of his 

 early education made such reading possible. His first important 

 work, A Key to the Geology of the Globe, was an endeavor to 

 show that the present features of the earth are all the results of 

 fixed and demonstrable laws, like those governing the develop- 

 ment of animals and plants. He believed that the earth was a 

 great magnet, made so directly or indirectly by the heat of the 

 sun. As a result of this, he thought that the axis and coast 

 lines of both continents tend to conform to the axis of the 

 ecliptic. The angular distance of twenty-three and a half de- 

 grees, which marks the northward extension of the sun in sum- 

 mer, he took to be a natural unit of measure in the structure of 

 the earth. 



Whether these relations are real or fanciful I have no means 

 of knowing. Perhaps in the ultimate progress of science it does 

 not matter, for many hypotheses must be framed and tested be- 

 fore we come to the full measure of the laws which regulate the 

 changes in the earth's crust. 



Dr. Owen was a gentle and reverent man, unassuming and un- 

 selfish in all his relations a man of perfect courtesy of manners 

 because of perfect courtesy of thought ; a man whom everybody 

 loved because his love went out to every one. He was the highest 

 type of teacher, of naturalist, of scholar, of soldier even, because 

 above all his was the highest type of man.* 



* The writer once gave a lecture at New Harmony in the old building which had been 

 the Community Theater. Dr. Owen presided. He was then nearly eighty years of age and 

 very deaf. He did not hear one word of the lecture, but he had the art of appearing to 

 hear. To every point the speaker or the audience deemed good he responded with a smile 

 of appreciation, the expression of perfect courtesy, the courtesy of the u gentleman of the 

 old school," of which type Dr. Owen was one of the most perfect examples. 



