1 6 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



the Royal, Linnean, and Zoological Societies, the following 

 separately published works may be noticed : — the volumes on 

 Odontography, the Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, on the 

 Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton, on the 

 Nature of Limbs, on Parthenogenesis, on Fossil Reptiles, on 

 the Gigantic Fossil Birds of New Zealand, on Fossil Mammals 

 of Australia, and on the Great Mylodon and other Megatherioid 

 Quadrupeds of South America. 



Later on, when he had quitted the College of Surgeons to 

 become Superintendent of the Department of Natural History in 

 the British Museum, a post which he filled for twenty- seven 

 years, the new surroundings seemed to give fresh impetus to his 

 work, and his contributions to science were more numerous than 

 ever. During this period he published Memoirs on the British 

 Fossil Reptiles of the Mesozoic Formations — Pterodactyles, 

 1873-1877, and of the Liassic Formations — Icthyosaurs and 

 Plesiosaurs, 1865-1870 ; on the British Fossil Cetacea from the 

 Red Crag, 1870 ; on the Fossil Reptilia of South Africa, 

 1876 ; on the Classification and Geographical Distribution of 

 Mammals, 1859; and a Manual of Palaeontology, 1861. The 

 Royal Society's Catalogue of Scientific Papers credits him with 

 more than 360 titles, and amongst these we find a great variety 

 of themes ranging throughout the animal kingdom from Anthro- 

 poid Apes to Entozoa. Perhaps the subject in which he most 

 delighted was the investigation of the history of the gigantic 

 Extinct Birds of New Zealand, and the reconstruction of their 

 skeletons from the remains forwarded to him by travellers and 

 explorers. In this direction his labours were of the highest im- 

 portance, and, so far as his materials permitted, they may be 

 said to have been exhaustive. His papers on the various forms 

 of Dinomis, as well as those on the Dodo of Mauritius and the 

 Great Auk, all extinct of their kind, are amongst the most 

 remarkable productions of the palseontological acumen. It was 

 a well-deserved compliment on the part of the late John Gould, 

 when describing a new species of New Zealand Kiwi, to name it 

 in honour of Owen, Aptcryx pweni,* 



* A readily accessible and well engraved figure of this bird, drawn by the 

 late T. W. Wood, from a living specimen forwarded to this country by the 

 Acclimatisation Society of Otago, will be found in Halting and Moseuthal, 

 1 Ostriches and Ostrich Farming, ' p. 178 (2nd edition, 1879). 



