THE "SAILING" OF THE NAUTILUS. 281 



arrived with it in England, and presented it to the Royal 

 College of Surgeons. Mr. Owen was then Assistant- 

 Conservator of the Museum of the College under Mr. Clift, 

 who was afterwards his father-in-law. He immediately 

 commenced to anatomise, describe, and figure his rare 

 acquisition, and in the early part of 1832 published the 

 result of his work in the form of a masterly treatise, which 

 proved to be the foundation of his future fame.* 



Mr. Owen's investigations confirmed his previous sup- 

 position that the Pearly Nautilus is inferior in its organisa- 

 tion to octopus, sepia, or any other known cephalopod ; 

 that it is not isolated, but that it recedes towards the 

 gasteropods, to which belong the snail, the periwinkle, &c., 

 and that in some of its characters its structure is analo- 

 gously related to the still lower annulosa, or worms. Mr. 



* It is so interesting to most of us to know something of the early 

 work of our greatest men, and of the tide in their affairs, which, 

 taken at the flood, led on to fortune, that I hope I may be excused for 

 referring to the period when the distinguished chief of the Natural 

 History Department of the British Museum, the great comparative 

 anatomist, the unrivalled palaeontologist, the illustrious physiologist, 

 the venerable and venerated friend of all earnest students, was be- 

 ginning to attract the attention, and to receive the approbation of his 

 seniors as a promising young worker. In Messrs. Griffith and Pidgeon's 

 Supplement to Cuvier's ' Mollusca and Radiata,' published in 1834, the 

 treatise in question is thus mentioned : " We have much pleasure in 

 referring to a most excellent memoir on Nautilus pompilius, by Mr. 

 Owen, with elaborate figures of the animal, its shell, and various parts, 

 published by direction of the Council of the College of Surgeons. The 

 reader will find the most satisfactory information on the subject, and 

 the scientific public will earnestly hope that the present volume will be 

 the first of a similar series." This hope has been more than fulfilled. 

 Dean Buckland, in his ' Bridgewater Treatise,' wrote of this work : " I 

 rejoice in the present opportunity of bearing testimony to the value of 

 Professor Owen's highly philosophical and most admirable memoir 

 a work not less creditable to the author than honourable to the Royal 

 College of Surgeons, under whose auspices the publication has been so 

 handsomely conducted." 



