1833-36 
TAIL OF ICHTHYOSAURUS 
85 
Father came home we all drank congratulations 
to R. O., now a Fellow.’ 
Owen published several memoirs this year, of 
which the following may be mentioned as im- 
portant : — ‘ A Description of the Ova of “ Orni- 
thorhynchus paradoxus” (“Phil. Trans.”); ‘A 
Paper on the Dislocation of the Tail at a certain 
Point observable in the Skeletons of many Ichthy- 
osauria.’ This latter paper, in which he sug- 
gested that this dislocation signified the posses- 
sion of a heavy caudal fin, affords an example of 
Professor Owen’s extraordinary powers of deduc- 
tion. It was only in 1892, a short time before 
his death, that his suggestion was proved to be 
correct. In that year Dr. Fverhard Fraas dis- 
covered in the lias of Wlirtemberg the skeleton 
of an ichthyosaur in which the outlines of the 
fleshy parts were impressed on the stone. This 
specimen also showed that the caudal fin was really 
larger than Owen had ventured to imagine.'^ 
At the time when these papers were written, 
Owen was still continuing his work as Professor 
of Comparative Anatomy at St. Bartholomew’s. 
In September 1834 he received the following 
letter from Sir Anthony Carlisle. The letter is 
quoted here in full, as it illustrates the difficulties 
under which Owen worked in his earlier years, 
= E. Fraas, ‘ Ueber einen fiir Mineralogie, \q\. 2, p. 
neuen Fund von Ichthyosaurusin 87) ; see also R. Lydekkei, Aa- 
^Vurtenrbe^g' ’ (^T^eu€s JuliTbuch iuyctl Science ^892, p. 514* 
