THE HISTORY OF ANATOMICAL SCIENCE 305 
by anatomical and paleontological monography ; 
there was the path of philosophical anatomy, 
opened up by Vicq d’Azyr, Goethe, Geoffroy St. 
Hilaire, Oken, and followed out in the elaborate 
works of Spix and Cams on the skeleton, with 
results acutely checked and criticised by Cuvier ; 
there was the study of individual development in 
its dawn, but with its great future already clearly 
indicated by Von Baer ; there was the question of 
the development of animals and plants in general, 
or what is now commonly understood by the term 
evolution, waiting to be rescued from the region of 
speculation, to which it had been relegated for 
want of positive evidence one way or the other, 
and a good deal more damaged by its supporters 
than by its opponents. 
It was at this time, namely in 1830, that Owen 
turned from practical medicine to natural science ; 
and threw himself into the first-mentioned of these 
paths of exploration, with an energy which re- 
minds one of Geoffroy and Cuvier, when, a little 
younger, they set out on their remarkable careers. 
Owen s first recorded publication is an account of 
an aneurism. The second work in which he en- 
gaged was a catalogue of specimens in the museum 
of the Royal College of Surgeons. But, in the 
next year (1831), no fewer than eight papers on 
the anatomy of various mammals, birds, and 
reptiles which had died in the Zoological Gardens 
VOL. n. 
X 
