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Prof. Owen on Life and Species. 33 
Art. V.—Derivative Hypothesis of Life and Species; by 
rofessor OWEN, F'.R.8.* 
§ 422. Biological Questions of 1830.—At the close of my 
studies at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, in 1831, I returned 
strongly moved to lines of research bearing upon the then 
prevailing phases of thought on some general biological ques- 
ns. 
The great Master in whose dissecting-rooms, as well as in the 
ublic galleries of Comparative Anatomy, I was privileged to 
work, held that ‘species were not permanent :’ and taught this 
great and fruitful truth, not doubtfully or hypothetically, but 
as a fact established inductively on a wide and well-laid basis 
of observation, by which, indeed, among other acquisitions to 
science, Comparative Osteology had been created. Campery 
and Hunter{ suspected that species might be transitory ; but 
Cuvier, in defining the characters of his Anoplotherium and 
Paleotherium, &c., proved the fact. 
In this truly scientific labor the law of the subordination of 
the different organic characters to the condition of the whole 
animal was first appreciated, clearly enunciated, and its 
application shown to the reconstruction of lost species from 
fragmentary remains. The importance of this generalization 
may be paralleled with that of the principle of equivalents in 
chemical science.: 
Of the relation of past to present species, and the conditions 
of their succession, Cuvier had not an adequate basis for a de- 
cided opinion. Observation of changes in the relative position 
of land and sea suggested to him one condition of the advent 
of new species on an island or continent where old species had 
died out, This view he illustrates by a hypothetical case of 
- 
such succession,§ but expressly states :—‘Je ne prétends pas 
-® As there has been much discussion with regard to the relation of Prof. 
Owen’s views on the origin of i Darwin, we reprint this 
chapter (the 40th) from the forthcoming edition of his Anatomy of Vertebrates, 
from a pamphlet sent us by the author, omi ‘ 
+ coxcr’’ __ ¢ coxomr’’, and other authors cited in CXXXIX, p. xiv: Phe 
§ OXXXIX, tom. i 
i, p. Lxiii. De eee 
(Nos, denoting ‘Works’ in the ‘Lists of Authors cited’ in ‘Anatomy of Verte = 
= brates,’ Vols. I, 1, and IL) oo 
Am. Jour. Scr.—Szconp Serres, Vou. XLVI, No, 139.—d4n., 1860, 
