PROFESSOR OWEN 
CH. IV. 
II4 
the official letter. R. intends to see Sir Benjamin 
Brodie to-morrow before sending his acknowledg- 
ment.’ 
This Professorship Owen was obliged to 
decline, as the Council of the College of Surgeons 
required him to finish his Catalogue before accept- 
ing any other office. On June 29 he writes to 
the ‘ Managers of the Royal Institution of Great 
Britain’ in these terms 
‘ I should have immediately acknowledged, 
with becoming respect, the most gratifying and 
honourable mark of your esteem in the appoint- 
ment which you have been pleased to confer upon 
me, of the Fullerian Professorship of Physiology 
at the Royal Institution, had not a paramount 
engagement in relation to an important work — 
the Catalogue of the Hunterian Collection, com- 
pelled me to defer my communication until I was 
made aware of the decision of the Council of the 
College of Surgeons ; which, I regret to say, 
obliges me to forego, until the completion of that 
work, the acceptance of any other office than that 
I now hold at the College of Surgeons.’ 
Towards the end of July 1837, Owen paid 
a visit to Lancaster, chiefly in order to see his 
mother. After arriving at his birthplace he wrote 
a long letter to his wife, descriptive of his journey 
and of the pleasure he experienced in revisiting 
his native town. He also gives us a pleasant 
glimpse of the characteristic way in which he 
