December 20, 1894 J 



NATURE 



171 



the same year he was appointed Fullerian I'rofessor of 

 Physiology at the Koy.il Institution, so that there was no 

 relaxation in lecturing work during these years. Owen 

 was President of the British Association at its meeting at 

 Leeds in 1857. We also get a glimpse of him at Aberdeen 

 in 1S59. but can find no trace in these volumes of his 

 presence at the Oxford or Cambridge meetings of i860 

 and 1862 ; indeed, even when noticing the publication of 

 the memoir on the Aye-Aye in 1863, no reference is made 

 to the remarkable paper read at the Cambridge meeting 

 on the characters of this mammal as a test of the 

 Lamarckian and Darwinian hypotheses of the transmu- 

 tation and origin of species, nor is there any allusion to 

 the " two pitched battles about the origin of species at 

 Oxford," nor to Charles Kingsley's well-meant little squib, 

 published during the Cambridge meeting by Macmillan 

 and Co., " On the great Hippocampus (Question." 



Mrs. Owen, after a married life of nearly forty years, 

 died in May 1S73. In 1875 Owen refers to his daily task 

 work becoming tiresome, as well it might to a man past 

 seventy, but several important memoirs were published 

 by him between this year and 1885, and in 1S81 he de- 

 livered a long address to the Biological Section of the 

 British Association at York, on the new Natural History 

 Museum ; this was almost his last public address, and it 

 was delivered with a force and power that reminded his 

 hearers of his early days. On January 5, 1S84, Owen 

 was, on his retirement from the post of .Superintendent of 

 the British Museum, gazetted a K.C.B. He was present 

 at a meeting of the Linnean Society, at Burlington House, 

 in May 1888, "to receive a gold medal." The medal 

 thus alluded to was one of two struck in commemoration of 

 the centenary of the Linnean Society ; one medal was to 

 be given to a botanist, and one to a zoologist. The 

 botanist on this occasion was Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker. 

 Up to the close of 1S89 he was occasionally seen at the 

 Athenaeum. Early in 1890 he had a slight paralytic 

 seizure, from which he never entirely recovered. In his 

 well-known library, when able to be out of bed, he would 

 sometimes sit for hours looking out wistfully at the view 

 over the park, and on the morning of December 16, 1892, 

 the end quite peacefully came. 



As to Owen's position as a writer on anatomical 

 science, we have no occasion to enter, for what we con- 

 ceive to be by far the most interesting portion of these 

 two volumes is a criticism, in the true sense of this word, 

 thereof so straightforward, searching, and honest as to 

 leave nothing further to be desired. We should like to 

 have transferred the greater part of this analysis by Prof. 

 Huxley of the work done by Owen to our pages. He 

 doubts " if in the long annals of anatomy more is to be 

 placed to the credit of any single worker " than to Owen, 

 and his is " work some of which occupies a unique 

 position, if one considers, not merely its general high 

 standard of excellence, but the way in which so many of 

 the memoirs have opened up new regions of investiga- 

 tion." 



As to the Judgment passed on the speculative side of 

 Owen's work, will not all now deplore that so much 

 tireless industry, great capacity, and extensive learn- 

 ing were spent on themes profiting so little as the arche- 

 type of the vertebrate skeleton and the nature of limbs .' 

 Perhaps it may seem to some that Prof Huxley has 

 NO. 13 I 2, VOL. 51} 



T"! 



devoted too much space to Owen's speculative writings, 

 but, as he says : 



" Obvious as are the merits of Owen's anatomical and 

 palgeontological work to every expert, it is necessary to 

 be an expert to discern them ; and endless pages of 

 analysis of his memoirs would not have made the general 

 reader any wiser than he was at first. On the other hand, 

 the nature of the broad problems of the ' Archetype ' 

 and of ' Parthenogenesis ' may easily be stated in such a 

 way as to be generally intelligible ; while from Goethe to 

 Zola, poets and novelists have made them interesting to 

 the public. I have therefore permitted myself to dwell 

 upon these topics at some length ; but the reader must 

 bear in mind that whatever view is taken of Sir Richard 

 Owen's speculations on these subjects, his claims to a 

 high place among those who have made great and per- 

 manently valuable contributions to knowledge remain 

 unassailable." 



Several interesting portraits of Owen, taken at different 

 periods of his life, form part of the illustrations of these 

 volumes. There are also sketches of the Gateway, 

 Lancaster Castle, and of Sheen Lodge, in Richmond 

 Park. 



ELECTROMAGNETIC THEORY. 

 Electromagnetic Theory. By Oliver Heaviside, F.R.S. 



Vol. I. (London : The Electrician Printing and 



Publishing Company, Limited, 1893.) 



E basis of Mr. Heaviside's treatise is the inter- 

 inked magnetic and electric circuits. This is 

 taken from Maxwell, but it is much more fully developed, 

 and the analogy between the electric and magnetic cir- 

 cuits is followed out with great care, and is insisted upon 

 at every turn. That you can have a conductor charged 

 electrically, while you cannot have a single magnetic pole, 

 destroys the perfection of the analogy but little. There 

 is a more serious hiatus in the absence of the magnetic 

 analogue to an electric conductor. Mr. Heaviside, how- 

 ever, completes the analogy by imagining such things as 

 magnetic conductors and magnetic currents. The mag- 

 netic displacement and convection currents of course 

 exist, but magnetic conduction current, with its corre- 

 sponding magnetic conductivity, is a most useful notion. 

 The ideas of the magnetic current must not be confused 

 with the unscientific notions of magnetomotive force 

 and magnetic resistance, which are supposed to bring 

 electromagnetisin within the intellectual reach of the 

 benighted practical man. At first Mr. Heaviside uses 

 the hypothetical magnetic current as a means of giving 

 his readers a thorough grasp of the interlinked circuits, 

 and of completing the analogy between them. Later, 

 however, in dealing with submarine messages, he shows 

 that magnetic conductivity outside the wires, w^hich is 

 easy to treat mathematically, would have the same effect 

 on the messages as electric resistance in the cable itself, 

 which would be more difficult. 



.\s Mr. Heaviside's first volume has been already 

 reviewed in the Electrician and Philosophical Magazine 

 by Profs. Fitzgerald and .Minchin, and as the work is so 

 full and so suggestive that a review might be longer than 

 the book, this notice will deal mainly with matters not 

 already fully discussed, though of course there will be 

 some overlapping. 



