76 
PROFESSOR OWEN 
CH. VI. 
in the chai-r ! I can generally manage a “ return ” 
for the Royal Society and Science, &c., but this 
was a new departure. ... Not long ago I met at 
a dinner at Lord Leven’s, Dhuleep Singh and his 
wife, who was in grand Oriental costume. The 
Maharajah is intelligent, and talked much to me 
on the subject of fossils. The Maharanee is deci- 
dedly pretty.’ 
In the early spring of this year Owen gave 
the inaugural lecture of a literary and scientific 
society at Hampstead, ‘ Wayside Gatherings and 
their Teachings.’ This lecture was afterwards 
printed in the July number of the ‘Gentleman’s 
Magazine,’ 1867. Extracts from it are subjoined, 
as they may serve to show Owen’s power of 
extempore lecturing and of investing the com- 
monest objects with interest and attraction. ‘ I 
looked forward,’ he begins, ‘ to leisure for some 
preparation (for this lecture), but one pressing call 
for work followed another until, being immersed 
in the additional labours which this season entails 
of annual summaries, stock-taking, and reports on 
the year’s increase to our vast and ever-orowing 
national Departments of Natural History, I found 
myself suddenly driven so closely to the appointed 
evening that I had no other resource but to 
throw myself on your indulgence for such unpre- 
meditated remarks as might be suggested by a 
few common objects of natural history which I 
hastily gathered together on my way, and have 
