The President's Address. By A. D. Michael. 
5 
time of his death, which occurred since I have occupied this chair, so 
many able memoirs of him appeared in print, and so full a bio- 
graphy has just been published, that I hardly think it would be 
desirable for me to enter here upon any lengthy summary of his 
history or achievements; but I may remind you that when he be- 
came our President he was not the venerable and striking figure 
which we used to see near the Sheen Gate of Richmond Park, and 
which made so deep an impression on all present when he received 
the first Linnean gold medal. Born at Lancaster in July 1804, he 
matriculated at Edinburgh in 1824, and in 1825, when he was just 
twenty-one, he paid that visit to Paris which enabled him to make 
Cuvier’s acquaintance, and probably greatly influenced his future life. 
He became one of Abernethy’s dissectors at St. Bartholomew’s 
Hospital, and it was upon Abernethy’s suggestion that Owen was 
first employed in 1828 to catalogue the Hunterian collection at 
the College of Surgeons, with which institution he was connected 
until 1855. When he took the chair at our first public meeting 
Richard Owen was a man of thirty-five, in the full tide of work and 
vigour; he was already a Fellow of the Royal Society, Lecturer on 
Comparative Anatomy at St. Bartholomew’s, and Hunterian Professor 
at the Royal College of Surgeons ; he had just completed his catalogue 
of the physiological specimens in the Hunterian collection, in five 
quarto volumes, and was commencing his great work on the study of 
teeth, but the larger number of the three hundred and sixty papers 
which he contributed to the Transactions of various learned Societies, 
and which will be found duly enumerated in the Royal Society’s 
catalogue, and at the end of vol. ii. of Owen’s biography, were yet 
to come. He remained our President for two years, was a regular 
attendant in the chair, and took a deep interest in the welfare of the 
Society. 
On the 29th of January, 1840, Owen was in the chair at the 
council meeting when Bowerbank reported that, in addition to the 
forty-five members who had joined at the first meeting, sixty-five more 
had joined the Society ; he also reported that the Society had made its 
first purchase ; it is rather amusing to find that this was a diamond 
and cutting-board, to cut glass slips for the use of the members, the 
Provisional Committee having fixed on the sizes of 3 in. by 1 in. and 
3 in. by 1J in. as those to be adopted. 
At this moment Schleiden was commenting upon the paucity of 
British microscopical research, and attributing it to the want of efficient 
instruments, not knowing that an Association was then forming which 
was to raise British Microscopes to probably the first position in the 
world. 
On the 29th of February, 1840, it was decided to accept the offer 
of the Horticultural Society to allow the Microscopical Society to hold 
its evening meetings at their rooms, 21 Regent Street, for a payment 
of 20/. a year. 
