262 
PROFESSOR OWEN 
CH. IX. 
few great bones repose gracefully against a tree 
in that wooded part of the garden which has 
always been left entirely to Nature. These little 
woods are still full of the wild flowers which the 
Professor gathered in his travels on the Continent 
or his rambles in the country, the roots of which 
he brought home with him and planted himself. 
Thus his latter days peacefully glided away. 
His old friends were gradually leaving him, and 
of his scientific contemporaries hardly any re- 
mained, so many changes of scientific thought 
had he lived to see, and so long a period had his 
life embraced. The last letter which he received 
from perhaps the oldest of them, Lord Enniskillen, 
is dated August 19, 1885; ‘Neither of us,’ he 
writes, ‘ my dear old friend, are so young as we 
were, nor nearly so active as when we used to 
clamber over the cliffs with Mary Aiming. By- 
the-by, I have just bought from a nephew of 
Mary’s a number of drawings and manuscripts, 
nmny of them by De la Beche and Conybeare,' 
but I have not examined them yet.’ 
In proportion as Sir Richard’s memory 
became more failing with regard to present- 
day matters, it became all the clearei" as to the 
time of his schooldays and early youth. 
He often used to tell stories of his school- 
fellows, and still oftener of his mother, of her 
goodness to him, of her love of music. , He 
* The collector at Lyme Regis. 
