THE HISTORY OF ANATOMICAL SCIENCE 313 
the fact that the translation of Oken’s ‘ Lehrbuch 
der Naturphilosophie ’ ^ was undertaken at his 
instance. Thus, when Owen passes from matters 
of anatomical fact and their immediate interpreta- 
tion to morphological speculation, it is not surpris- 
ing that he also passes from the camp of Cuvier 
into that of his adversaries. 
In the advertisement of the work ‘ On the 
Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate 
Skeleton,’ published in 1848, Owen says : — 
‘ The subject of the following essay has occu- 
pied a portion of my attention from the period 
when, after having made a certain progress in 
comparative anatomy, the evidence of a greater 
conformity to type, especially in the bones of 
the head of the vertebrate animals, than the 
immortal Cuvier had been willing to admit 
began to enforce a reconsideration of his conclu- 
sions, to which I had previously yielded implicit 
assent.’ 
In fact, what I may call ‘Okenism’ colours 
Owen’s whole cast of thought on these matters, 
and his admiration for Oken finds frequent vent 
in his writings. Thus, in a note at p. 8 of the 
‘ Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate 
Skeleton’ (1848), we find : — 
‘ Oken’s famous “ Programm ueberdie Bedeu- 
tung der Schadelknochen ” was published in the 
same year (1807) as Geoffroy’s memoir on the 
^ Physiophilosophy, translated by Tulk. Ray Society, 1847. 
