118 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



afterwards at the British Museum, and are introduced to his 

 friends and fellow-workers, many of them distinguished men of 

 science. Consulted by royalty and by the government of the day 

 on various questions of reform, such as the supply of water to 

 large towns, the improvement of slaughter-houses and meat- 

 markets, &c, we find him sitting on various commissions and 

 giving valuable and practical advice. The important services 

 which he rendered as a Commissioner of the first International 

 Exhibition in 1851 were duly appreciated by the late Prince 

 Consort, and the public are now beginning to recognise the 

 advantage which has resulted from the removal, which he 

 advocated, of the Natural History collections in the British 

 Museum from Bloomsbury to South Kensington. 



The laborious task of cataloguing, in five volumes, the 

 collections of John Hunter, and the large number of scientific 

 memoirs which he published during fifty years of unremitting 

 study and research, have resulted in a bequest to posterity of the 

 most valuable and instructive kind. 



By way of appendix to the second volume of this * Life,' 

 Prof. Huxley has written a very able criticism of Owen's position 

 in the history of anatomical science, and we cannot do better 

 than quote from it a few sentences in which he has given an 

 opinion which no one is better qualified than himself to express. 

 He says: — 



" During more than half a century Owen's industry remained unabated; 

 and whether we consider the quantity or the quality of the work done, or 

 the wide range of his labours, I doubt if, in the long annals of anatomy, 

 more is to be placed to the credit of any single worker." 



After enumerating some of his most important memoirs, and 

 showing in what particular respects they contributed to know- 

 ledge, he proceeds : — 



"It is a splendid record; enough, and more than enough, to justify the 

 high place in the scientific world which Owen so long occupied. If I 

 mistake not, the historian of comparative anatomy and of palaeontology will 

 always assign to Owen a place next to, and hardly lower than, that of 

 Cuvier, who was practically the creator of these sciences in their modern 

 shape ; and whose works must always remain models of excellence in their 

 kind. It was not uncommon to hear our countryman called ■ the British 

 Cuvier,' and so far, in my judgment, the collocation was justified, high as 

 the praise it implies." 



