1848-49 ENGLISH IN TERTIARY TIMES 331 



Owen did not carry out his intention of resign- 

 ing his Commissionership— on the contrary, he 

 stayed on the Sewers Commission until its work 

 w T as completed, and also served on the subsequent 

 Commission on Smithfield Market, &c. 



The year 1 849 was marked by the appearance 

 of Owen's memoirs ' On the Nature of Limbs,' 

 and on ' Parthenogenesis' — a term which he himself 

 devised in order to designate scientifically the phe- 

 nomenon which that name implies. He com- 

 menced a remarkable series of papers on the fossil 

 birds of New Zealand at this time in the ' Trans- 

 actions of the Zoological Society,' ' On Dinornis ' 

 (Parts I. and II.) as also various papers on some 

 fossil mammals of Australia. Mention must be 

 also made of the series of monographs which he 

 prepared for the Palseontological Society on 

 British fossil vertebrates, including a memoir on 

 the fossil reptiles of the London Clay (1849-50). 

 This monograph contains the following remarks 

 concerning the former existence of crocodiles and 

 alligators in England, which may be found of 

 interest : — 



' Had any human being,' he says, ' existed [in 

 Tertiary times] and traversed the land where now 

 the south of Britain rises from the ocean, he might 

 have witnessed the crocodile cleaving the waters 

 of its native river with the velocity of an arrow, and 

 ever and anon rearing its long and slender snout 

 above the waves, and making- the banks re-echo with 



