MEMOIR OF THE LATE SIR RICHARD OWEN. 15 



Born in Lancaster in July, 1804, he manifested an early 

 taste for the study of medicine, and after matriculating at 

 Edinburgh in 1824, he entered St. Bartholomew's Hospital as a 

 student in 1825. The following year, having obtained his 

 diploma at the Royal College of Surgeons, he commenced 

 practice on his own account, in Serle Street, Lincoln's Inn 

 Fields, but soon found occupation still more congenial to him in 

 the curatorship of John Hunter's collections in the College of 

 Surgeons, — a post to which he succeeded on the death of William 

 Clift, whose daughter he married, — and in the preparation of a 

 catalogue of these collections, which was urgently needed to 

 enhance their value and utility. Owen undertook this in 1828, 

 and the first part of the catalogue appeared in 1830. This year 

 was to him an eventful one. He had joined the Zoological 

 Society as an original member, and had made the acquaintance 

 of Cuvier when the latter came to London, paying him a return 

 visit in Paris the following year. It need scarcely be said that 

 this acquaintance with the great French anatomist had a most 

 important influence upon his career. Especially was he im- 

 pressed with the collections formed by Cuvier and Valenciennes 

 for their great work on Fishes, in which, more particularly 

 with the fossil forms, he became fascinated. 



Four years later he was appointed to the newly-established 

 Chair of Comparative Anatomy at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 

 and was elected a Fellow of the Boyal Society. After his 

 marriage to Miss Clift he succeeded — in 1836— Sir Charles Bell 

 as Professor of Anatomy and Physiology to the College of 

 Surgeons, and the Trustees of the Hunterian Museum having 

 about this time established the Hunterian Professorship, Owen 

 was elected thereto. In 1837 he edited ' Hunter's Animal 

 Economy,' and continued to fill both chairs till 1855 ; during 

 this time he published ten more volumes of the catalogue of the 

 Hunterian Collection, and on Mr. Cliffs death he became also 

 Conservator of the museum. He now gradually retired from 

 the practice of his profession, and devoted himself entirely to 

 scientific pursuits. 



" It is quite amazing," says the writer of an able memoir in 

 'The Times ' (Dec. 19th) "to take even a rapid survey of the 

 amount of work published during this period." Not to mention 

 the very numerous memoirs contributed to the Transactions of 



