244 
PROFESSOR OWEN 
CH. vin. 
Professor used to extract a good deal of amuse- 
ment, was a disreputable old person, long since 
deceased, whose nefarious proceedings were de- 
scribed in an article contributed by Owen to 
‘ Blackwood’s Magazine’ in 1871. 
From 1880 to 1884 Owen was engaged in 
superintending the removal of the specimens from 
the British to the Natural History Museum at 
South Kensington, which was now prepared to 
receive them. He thus lived to enjoy the realisa- 
tion of his life-long wish. Before his retire- 
ment he had the gratification of seeing the collec- 
tions — many of which had been crowded in the 
dark vaults of the old Bloomsbury Museum, where 
it was impossible that they could be properly 
exhibited — now safely transferred and displayed 
to their best advantage in the new museum. 
The new museum was not a source of un- 
mixed delight to everybody. Mr. Ruskin wrote 
the following letter to Owen about this time in 
answer to an invitation to go over the building 
John Ruskin to R. Owen 
November 6. 
‘ Dear Professor Owen, — I am entirely grateful 
for your most kind letter and memory of me ; but 
I can’t come to-day (for cold in teeth and throat). 
Alas ! My dear old musty Museum was as much 
a hobby to me as your new one to you, and it 
would be mere misery to me to see your new 
