1833-36 TAIL OF ICHTHYOSAURUS 85 



Father came home we all drank congratulations 

 to R. O., now a Fellow.' 



Owen published several memoirs this year, of 

 which the following may be mentioned as im- 

 portant : — 'A Description of the Ova of " Orni- 

 thorhynchus paradoxus" ("Phil. Trans."); 'A 

 Paper on the Dislocation of the Tail at a certain 

 Point observable in the Skeletons of many Ichthy- 

 osauria.' This latter paper, in which he sug- 

 gested that this dislocation signified the posses- 

 sion of a heavy caudal fin, affords an example of 

 Professor Owen's extraordinary powers of deduc- 

 tion. It was only in 1892, a short time before 

 his death, that his suggestion was proved to be 

 correct. In that year Dr. Everhard Fraas dis- 

 covered in the lias of Wiirtemberg the skeleton 

 of an ichthyosaur in which the outlines of the 

 fleshy parts were impressed on the stone. This 

 specimen also showed that the caudal fin was really 

 larger than Owen had ventured to imagine. 2 



At the time when these papers were written, 

 Owen was still continuing his work as Professor 

 of Comparative Anatomy at. St. Bartholomew's. 

 In September 1834 he received the following 

 letter from Sir xAmthony Carlisle. The letter is 

 quoted here in full, as it illustrates the difficulties 

 under which Owen worked in his earlier years, 



2 E. Fraas, ' Ueber einen fur Mineralogie, 1 892, vol. 2, p. 

 neuen Fund von Ichthyosaurus in S7) ; see also R. Lydekker, Na- 

 Wiirtemberg ' (Neues Jahrbuch tural Scie?zce, Sept. 1892, p. 514. 



