106 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 
white pin-like forms with secondary structure between. Now I offer no 
opinion as to the truth of the whole of the appearances, but only produce 
it as an example of what an oil-immersion objective of large aperture 
shows when working at its best. 
Print No. 3 shows a scale folded over, and two of the same pin-like 
bodies projecting nearly their whole length from the line of the fold. 
No. 4 also shows a scale folded over, and there the projections, although 
less pronounced, are still visible. On No. 5 I show three or four of the 
“ pins” separated from the scale altogether, and I think there is sufficient 
evidence in the last three prints to prove that they are real, and not 
ghosts. 
But this is not the whole of the structure, and what that whole is it 
is not at present for me to say, nor do I early expect to, but I am still 
collecting evidence, and hope to carry the matter still a little further at 
an early date. 
(6) Miscellaneous. 
The late Sir Richard Owen, K.C.B., F.R.S.— Although the Fellows 
will have read numerous obituary notices of this distinguished natural- 
ist, they will expect to have, in their own Journal, some account of the 
man who was the first President of the Society. Although he does not 
appear to have been among the most constant of those friends of Dr. 
Bowerbank who met at the latter’s and at one another’s homes to discuss 
microscopical problems, his abilities and his position marked him out as 
the first President of the Society which grew around that nucleus, so 
that he occupied the chair in 1840 and 1841, and delivered the first two 
Presidential addresses. He retained throughout life a warm interest in 
the affairs of the Society, and none expressed more warmly than he his 
satisfaction at the improvement in the prospects and activity of the 
Society, which has been so remarkable during the last fifteen years. 
His own most important contribution to the microscopical side of his 
science is to be found in his large work on c Odontography,’ illustrated 
by 168 beautiful plates, many of which are devoted to the details of the 
minute structure of the teeth of Vertebrates. 
Born in 1804, on July 20th, originally of Huguenot extraction, and 
endowed with the constitution, both physical and mental, of a giant, 
Owen probably produced, single-handed, a larger amount of descriptive 
work than any other naturalist. Although, in recent years, he was 
regarded as a conservative, if not an obstructive, he was full to the brim 
of a philosophical desire to generalize and to speculate. If we say that 
he generalized about things different to those on which, say Prof. 
Haeckel or Mr. Romanes speculate, we are, after all, only saying that 
men and times change. His acuteness in solving palaeontological pro- 
blems has almost become a proverb. Of his speculations some have 
been shown by later discoveries to have been justified, some have had to 
be modified, others to be decisively rejected ; but, it is to be remembered 
that Owen was a philosophical as well as a descriptive naturalist. As 
was well said by Prof. Huxley, he was not only the continuator of 
Cuvier, he belonged also to the philosophical school of Geoffroy Saint- 
Hilaire and Oken. 
With regard to the branches of Zoology which he studied, his range 
