1860-61 DEATH OF HIS SISTER CATHERINE 125 



Before returning to London Owen paid a 

 visit to his friend Bateman at Congleton, with 

 Dr. Daubeny, Du Chaillu, E. W. Cooke, and 

 Dr. Garner, 4 and, after staying a few days there, 

 left for Lancaster, Glamorganshire, the Wrekin 

 and Shrewsbury, and so back to London. At 

 Shrewsbury he went to the Museum, which 

 ' contains some old fossil friends, including my 

 Rhynchosaurus, and the best of the Roman anti- 

 quities of Uriconium.' 



He had scarcely returned home when he was 

 summoned to Lancaster to the death-bed of his 

 sister Catherine. On hearing of her illness he 

 wrote at once to say he was coming, and enclosed 

 a letter to his dying sister (October 22) written 

 in large text hand, so that she might be able 

 to read it. ' Believe me, dearest Catherine,' he 

 says, ' I shall ever think of you with the warmest 

 affection and love, forgetting none of the instances 

 of your kind, warm heart and true affection.' 

 1 Her death,' he writes in his diary, ' has come 

 more suddenly than I expected.' He returned 

 home after spending a week at Lancaster with 

 his two surviving sisters. 



A few days later (November 6), he gave the 

 inaugural address of the Brighton and Sussex 

 Museum. ' The collection of the beautiful works 

 of Nature,' he remarked, 'is a work in which all of 

 us ought to feel some pleasure. Everywhere, if 



4 Robert Garner, author of History of Staffordshire 



