172 
PROFESSOR OWEN 
CH. V. 
college acquaintance of Lord E.’s, the Marquis 
of Hastings, who is at Scarboro’ with his wife. 
... A very agreeable evening. The Marchioness 
is a great fossilist. ... I have been at work in 
the museum (Whitby) ever since breakfast, lifting 
heavy fossils, measuring, sketching, and scribbling 
till my hand aches, or Hhs, as John Kemble 
would say.’ 
Soon after, in the same year, the first part of 
‘ Odontography ; or, a Treatise on the Comparative 
Anatomy of the Teeth,’ appeared. This great 
work, begun in 1840 and finished in 1845, con- 
sisted of two quarto volumes of 650 pages. It 
was the result of a series of microscopical inves- 
tigations, suggested by some fragments of the 
teeth of the extinct Megatherium and other 
animals from South America, which were sub- 
mitted to him by Charles Darwin. These frag- 
ments were in a state of incipient decomposition, 
and in examining them Owen was led to investi- 
gate and compare the differences existing in the 
external character of the microscopical structure 
of the teeth of every class of animal. This 
remarkable work, the ‘ Odontography,’ was illus- 
trated by 1 68 carefully-drawn plates ; but the 
constant microscopical study, combined with the 
preparation of the drawings for this work, which 
he was anxious to do himself, threatened him with 
an attack of retinitis’, and this compelled him to 
put the illustrations in the careful and painstaking 
