xxn RICHARD OWEN 367 



appreciated and deeply profited by the dependence of the study 

 of the living in elucidating the dead, and vice versd. Perhaps 

 the best example of this is to be seen in his elaborate memoir 

 on the Mylodon, published in 1842, entitled Description of the 

 Skeleton of an Extinct Gigantic Sloth (Mylodon rolustus, Owen), 

 with Observations on the Osteology, Natural Affinities, and 

 Probable Habits of the Megatheroid Quadrupeds in General, 

 a masterpiece both of anatomical description and of reasoning 

 and inference. A comparatively popular outcome of some of 

 his work in this direction was the volume on British Fossil 

 Mammals and Birds, published in 1844-46, as a companion 

 to the works of Yarrell, Bell, and others on the recent fauna 

 of our island. He also wrote, assisted by Dr. S. P. Woodward, 

 the article " Palaeontology " for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 

 which, when afterwards published in a separate form, reached 

 a second edition in 1861. 



To this first period of his life belong the courses of 

 Hunterian Lectures, given annually at the College of Surgeons, 

 each year on a fresh subject, and each year the means of 

 bringing before the world new and original discoveries which 

 attracted, even fascinated, large audiences, and did much to 

 foster an interest in the science among cultivated people of 

 various classes and professions. They also added greatly to 

 the scientific renown of the College in which they were given. 

 To this period also belong the development and popularisation 

 of those transcendental views of anatomy the conception of 

 creation according to types, and the construction of the 

 Vertebrate archetype views which had great attractions and 

 even uses in their day, and which were accepted by many, at 

 all events as working hypotheses around which facts could be 

 marshalled, and out of which grew a methodical system, of 

 anatomical terminology, much of which has survived to the 

 present time. The recognition of homology and its distinction 

 from analogy, which was so strongly insisted on by Owen, 

 marked a distinct advance in philosophical anatomy. These 

 generalisations, first announced in lectures at the College of 

 Surgeons, were afterwards embodied in two works : The Arche- 

 type and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton (1848), and The 

 Nature of Limbs (1849). 



