46 
PROFESSOR OWEN 
CH. II. 
Owen was obliged, in a large number of cases, to 
obtain and examine fresh materials. In this way ' 
the volumes of the Catalogue appeared, year after 
year — ‘ a work of scarcely inferior importance to 
the museum itself’ ‘‘ No more fitting field can 
be imagined for the development of Owen’s 
genius. 
In the early part of September Owen took 
a rest from his work by staying a short time 
at Lancaster with his mother and sisters. He 
never lost an opportunity of paying a visit to 
his native town. Writing to Mrs. Clift from 
Lancaster, September 13, 1830, he describes his 
journey through Birmingham and Manchester. 
H is letter gives a good idea of the discomforts 
of travelling in the early part of the century. 
‘ My journey,’ he says, ‘ to Manchester was a 
very wet one, and marked by nothing in particular 
but a very musical guard, and that instead of ' 
riding over the Derbyshire hills I found myself, \ 
to my great surprise, discharged at the Swan Inn, j 
Birmingham, about nine o’clock in the evening. 
They told me that the coach for Manchester would 1 
start in half an hour ; but it was near eleven ’ 
o’clock before we started, so I was prevented 1 
from calling on any one in that place, in conse- 
quence of momentary expectation of being called 
upon to mount the coach. The night set in so 
drearily that I agreed to take an inside place if 
Knight’s Eng. Cyclop. : Biography. \ 
