172 PROFESSOR OWEN ch. v. 



college acquaintance of Lord E.'s, the Marquis 

 of Hastings, who is at Scarboro' with his wife. 

 ... A very agreeable evening. The Marchioness 

 is a great fossilist. ... I have been at work in 

 the museum (Whitby) ever since breakfast, lifting 

 heavy fossils, measuring, sketching, and scribbling 

 till my hand aches, or Hits, as John Kemble 

 would say.' 



Soon after, in the same year, the first part of 

 * Odontography ; or, a Treatise on the Comparative 

 Anatomy of the Teeth,' appeared. This great 

 work, begun in 1840 and finished in 1845, con ~ 

 sisted of two quarto volumes of 650 pages. It 

 was the result of a series of microscopical inves- 

 tigations, suggested by some fragments of the 

 teeth of the extinct Megatherium and other 

 animals from South America, which were sub- 

 mitted to him by Charles Darwin. These frag- 

 ments were in a state of incipient decomposition, 

 and in examining them Owen was led to investi- 

 gate and compare the differences existing in the 

 external character of the microscopical structure 

 of the teeth of every class of animal. This 

 remarkable work, the ' Odontography,' was illus- 

 trated by 168 carefully-drawn plates ; but the 

 constant microscopical study, combined with the 

 preparation of the drawings for this work, which 

 he was anxious to do himself, threatened him with 

 an attack of retinitis, and this compelled him to 

 put the illustrations in the careful and painstaking 



