68 
PROFESSOR OWEN 
CH. HI. 
antediluvian hewer of wood. R. made a pleasant 
stay at Mr. Armstrong’s and returned home on the 
1 6th.’ 
In this year appeared an interesting paper by 
Owen ‘ On the Affinities of Stereognathus Ooliti- 
cus,’^ a mammal from the Stonesfield slateof Stones- 
field, belonging to the horizon of the Lower Great 
Oolite. The remains submitted to Owen consisted 
of two to three inches of a jaw, containing three 
molar teeth. In his paper Owen gives a clear 
statement of the province and application of 
physiology in the determination of fossil remains, 
and in the singularly cautious manner peculiar to 
him compared the stereognathus’ jaw with that of 
a hoofed mammal. In the light of more modern 
science, however, it is thought to belong to a 
peculiar group intermediate between the marsu- 
pials and the monotremes.^ The paper attracted 
some attention at the time, for the bare suggestion, 
of a hoofed mammal or ungulate so low down 
in the series of rocks and so remote in age would 
throw a new and unexpected light upon the whole 
of palceozoology, the known remains being ex- 
clusively those of marsupials at that time. 
Towards the end of 1857 Owen was offered 
and accepted an appointment which some years 
previously, while at the College of Surgeons, he 
was obliged to decline : it was the Fullerian Profes- 
“ Quarterly Journal Geol. ® Animals like the Echidna 
Soc. 1857. and Ornithorhynchus. 
