1848-49 ENGLISH IN TERTIARY TIMES 33i 
Owen did not carry out his intention of resign- 
ing his Commissionership — on the contrary, he 
stayed on the Sewers Commission until its work 
was completed, and also served on the subsequent 
Commission on Smithfield Market, &c. 
The year 1849 was marked by the appearance 
of Owen’s memoirs ‘ On the Nature ol Limbs, 
and on ‘ Parthenogenesis’ — a term which he himself 
devised in order to designate scientifically the phe- 
nomenon which that name implies. He com- 
menced a remarkable series of papers on the fossil 
birds of New Zealand at this time in the Irans- 
actions of the Zoological Society,’ ‘ On Dinornis ’ 
(Parts I. and II.) as also various papers on some 
fossil mammals of Australia. Mention must be 
also made of the series of monographs which he 
prepared for the Palaeontological Society on 
British fossil vertebrates, including a memoir on 
the fossil reptiles of the London Clay (1849-50). 
This monograph contains the following remarks 
concerning the former existence of crocodiles and 
alligators in England, which may be found oi 
interest : — 
‘ Had any human being,’ he says, ‘ existed [in 
Tertiary times] and traversed the land where now 
the south of Britain rises from the ocean, he might 
have witnessed the crocodile cleaving the waters 
of its native river with the velocity of an arrow, and 
ever and anon rearing its long and slender snout 
above the waves, and making thebanks re-echo with 
