THE HISTORY OF ANATOMICAL SCIENCE 309 
(1833), and the description of the terrible parasite 
of man, Trichina spiralis. 
In regard to Taxonomy, Owen made a variety 
of proposals, the consideration of most of which 
would involve discussions altogether out of place 
in this sketch. But there is a notable exception 
in the case of the ‘ attempt to develop Cuvier’s 
idea of the classification of pachyderms by the 
number of their toes ’ appended to the ‘ descrip- 
tion of teeth and portions of jaws of two extinct 
anthracotherioid quadrupeds {^Hyopotamtis vecti- 
anus and H. bovinus)' (1848), as to the high 
value of which I think all zoologists are agreed. 
In 1837, Owen, without any pause in the long 
and important series of anatomical investigations 
which have been mentioned, began those contri- 
butions to palaeontology which, in after years, per- 
haps contributed most to his fame with the public. 
His first work in this department is a memoir, 
published in the second volume of the Proceedings 
of the Geological Society, on an extinct mammal 
discovered in South America by Darwin in 1833, 
which Owen named Toxodon Platensis. It is 
worthy of notice that, in the title of this memoir, 
there follow, after the name of the species, the 
words ‘ referable by its dentition to the Rodentia, 
but with affinities to the Pachydermata and the 
herbivorous Cetacea ; ’ indicating the importance 
in the mind of the writer of the fact that, 
like Cuvier’s Anoplothe 7 'm 7 n and PalcBotherium, 
