of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, of which he was an active member. His first published paper is, " An account of the dissection of the parts concerned in the aneurism, for the cure of which Dr. Stevens tied the internal iliac artery," in the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions,' vol. xvi. 1830. Dr. Stevens had transmitted an account of this operation, the first which had been performed on that artery, in 1812, from the island of Santa Cruz, announcing its success. Doubts were entertained, and had been publicly expressed, as to the possibility of reaching so deep-seated an artery. The patient died in 1822. Part of the body was preserved in spirits and brought to England in 1829. "Dr. Stevens," writes Mr. Owen, "at the suggestion of Mr. Lawrence, deposited the preparation in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, and the dissection being entrusted to me, he requested me to communicate the particulars to the Society" (p. 3). The result of this dissection was to demonstrate the fact of the application of the ligature on the internal iliac, and its effect in the obliteration of the aneurism.

It appears that about this time, Mr. Owen, having been dissuaded from entering the medical service of the Navy by Mr. Abernethy, who had appreciated at St. Bartholomew's his attainments and skill as an anatomist, accepted an appointment, through Abernethy's recommendation, in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.

The famous collections of John Hunter, purchased by Parliament in 1799, had been transferred to the Company (afterwards the College) of Surgeons.

The description of the numerous specimens and drawings of the different series,-physiological, pathological, and zoological,―originally undertaken by Sir Everard Home, was finally abandoned by him in 1825: the materials published by him in his "Lectures on Comparative Anatomy " were unavailable for the purposes of a catalogue. Public attention was called to this event by the strictures of the editor of the newly established journal the Lancet.' Mr. Clift, the Curator, required the aid of a competent anatomist and zoologist in this undertaking. The first results of the combined labours of Mr. Clift and his young associate were the Catalogue of the Pathological Specimens' (two vols., 1830) and the Catalogue of Monsters and Malformations' (in 1831).

To determine the species of animals dissected by Hunter constituted the great difficulty of the cataloguing and describing, and

Owen, who had acquired a knowledge of the principles of zoology at Edinburgh, now resumed that study in amicable association with the eminent author of 'Zoological Recreations,' William Broderip, whose guidance at this important period of his life is gratefully acknowledged in Mr. Owen's work, 'On the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton.' The 'Catalogue of the Specimens of Natural History in Spirit,' 4to, 1830, was the earliest produce of this resumption of zoological studies.

All such expositions of the contents of public museums make known their needs, and stimulate to the supply of the missing links in the series. The living type of the great extinct group of chambered shells, e. g. Ammonites, etc., had long been a desideratum in natural history. The animal of the Nautilus pompilius was transmitted from the Pacific by a fellow-student of Owen, Mr. George Bennett, F.L.S., and presented to the Museum of the College. It was anatomized by Owen, and formed the subject of his first Memoir in Comparative Anatomy. The Board of Curators, in the advertisement to this work, which was published at the expense of the College (4to, 1832), refer to its author as "a gentleman engaged under their authority in preparing a descriptive catalogue of the anatomical preparations in the gallery of the Museum."

On the appearance of this memoir, it was translated into French by Milne-Edwards, and into German by Oken. In it the author enters, in a way characteristic of subsequent memoirs, into collateral questions on which the new facts throw light; he modifies the Cuvierian classification of Cephalopoda, based on characters of the shell, and proposed, on anatomical grounds, the orders Dibranchiata and Tetrabranchiata, which have been accepted.

Owen now appears to be fully engaged with his first great work, the 'Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Physiological Series of Comparative Anatomy,' of the Hunterian Collection, which then occupied the gallery of the single museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

The nature of the task is clearly explained in the author's quiet, business-like preface. Of the thousands of specimens and numerous drawings of animal and vegetable organs left by JOHN HUNTER, scarcely one had a record of the species from which it had been derived. Owen saw in the recently-organized "Zoological Society of London," the important aid which the dissection of the animals dying in their menagerie would afford him in his task.

H

He became a life-member in 1830, was soon elected on the council, and took an active share with the then Secretary, Mr. Vigors, the Vice-Secretary, Mr. Ed. Bennett, Messrs. Yarrell and T. Bell, in the establishment of the evening meetings for the purely scientific aims of the Society, and the prompt publication of the facts communicated. These originally appeared as the Proceedings of the Committee of Science' in 1830, Owen's "Anatomy of the Orangutan' forming part of the first volume. They took the title of Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London' in 1833, and have since appeared with exemplary regularity. Their value in the progress of Natural History science is appreciated by all its cultivators. A large proportion of Owen's zootomical researches is to be found in these volumes; the more important of which appear, with their illustrations, in the Transactions,' established in 1835. By the application of the facts thus accumulated, and the knowledge acquired by an extensive range of reading, the first volume of the catalogue, containing the preparations of the organs of motion and digestion, was completed and published in 1833. This was followed by a second, including the absorbent, circulating, respiratory, and urinary systems, in 1834; and in 1836 by a third, containing the nervous system, organs of sense, and connective and tegumentary systems and peculiarities. The series relative to the generation and development of animals, the most extensive and extraordinary in the whole museum, formed the two concluding volumes of the Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue,' which was completed in 1840, the Council of the College acknowledging their "great grafication" at these results of "the unremitting labour which had been for many years bestowed on this work by Mr. Owen, one of the conservators, and now Hunterian Professor of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology to the College."

As a lecturer, Owen commenced his career at the Medical School of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where he was appointed to the Chair of Comparative Anatomy in 1834. In the published syllabus of the course of lectures delivered in 1835, first appeared his proposed subdivision of the Zoophytes of Cuvier into the two provinces or subkingdoms Acrita and Nematoneura, the first characterized by "frequent repetition of the same organ in the same individual; no distinct respiratory system; no abdominal cavity,” etc., as contradistinguished from "alimentary tubes separated from the parietes of the body, and contained in an abdominal cavity; a

circulation in vessels and respiratory organs," which are amongst the characters of the Nematoneura. Rymer Jones, Arthur Farre, and White Cooper, were amongst the pupils attending this course.

In 1835, Owen married the only daughter of his friend and coadjutor, William Clift, Esq., F.R.S. In 1836 he became F.R.S., and was elected, on the retirement of Sir Charles Bell, to the Professorship of Anatomy and Physiology in the College of Surgeons. Parliament, in the purchase and transfer of the Hunterian Museum to the College, had stipulated that its contents should be illustrated in a course of twenty-four lectures. These had previously been divided between the Collegiate Professors of Anatomy and of Surgery. The College had now a man able and willing to grapple with the whole extent of zootomical science, and the stipulated number of lectures was assigned to Owen, with the title of "Hunterian Professor." He continued the useful practice of printing a 'Synopsis' of each course; and those who may have preserved the complete series of these summaries, as they were issued year by year, have the means of estimating the extent of scientific information communicated in the theatre of the College to the Fellows, Members, and privileged Visitors receiving tickets from the Council. In the Introductory Lecture to the last course delivered by Owen as Hunterian Professor, in 1855, he briefly alludes to the different aspects under which anatomy, properly so called, had been presented to his audience. First, as in the Hunterian physiological series, according to the organ, each organ or system of organs being successively reviewed and traced from its most simple to its most complex conditions. Second, each organ traced through the progressive stages of its development in the embryo of the several classes of animals. Third, the structure of the animal considered in its totality, and the zoological series anatomically described from the lowest to the highest species. Two courses of lectures were devoted to the skeletons or hard parts of animals, considered especially in their relations to "philosophical," or what Owen preferred to call "homological anatomy." At length, "having never deemed it the privilege of the Hunterian Professor to repose upon the repetition of the same annual course of lectures, with the mere addition of the chief discoveries of the preceding year,"* Owen entered upon the course of lectures devoted to the

* Introductory Lecture to the Course on Palæontology,' appended to 'Hunter's Essays and Observations,' vol. i. p. 284.

"Organization and Affinities of the Extinct Species of Animals." In the introductory lectures to this course, Owen made known, for the first time, the true position of Hunter in the History of Geology and Palæontology.'* Early in the following year Owen received his appointment as Superintendent of the Natural History Department in the British Museum, and resigned his Professorship and Curatorship in the Royal College of Surgeons. He had, indeed, completed the series of labours by which the Hunterian collections of specimens and drawings were rendered available to the students of physiology, zoology, and palæontology; his proper work at the College was done; and, in that sphere, his services to his country. If the Hunterian collections were worth £30,000 without a catalogue, what was now their value!

We resume the dates of the catalogues. The first volume of the 'Palæontological Catalogue,' containing descriptions of the Fossil Mammalia and Aves, appeared in 4to, with plates, in 1845. Concurrently with these, the catalogues of the recent osteology were proceeded with. These appeared in two 4to volumes of 914 pages of mostly small print, descriptive of 5906 specimens, in 1853. The second volume of the Palæontology, including the fossil Reptilia and Pisces, was published in 1854. In the meanwhile, a second edition of the first volume of the Physiological Catalogue' had been called for, and was published, at Professor Owen's suggestion, in the more convenient form of 8vo, in 1852, containing descriptions of numerous additional specimens. The convenience of the public had been consulted by the compilation of a general Synopsis of the Contents and Arrangement of the Museum,' of which the second edition, 8vo, from Owen's pen, appeared in 1850. In the interests of the Museum and the convenience of voyagers, he drew up a volume of Directions for Collecting and Preserving Animals and Parts of Animals,' published by the College in 1835.

All these works, with the stimulus of the Hunterian Lectures, led to a rapid and ever-increasing ratio of acquisitions, chiefly by donations to the museum. As the curator of a public museum, Owen had from the first foregone every opportunity to form a private collection. Every specimen, of whatever rarity or value, and under whatever circumstances pressed upon him, as a mark of personal regard or as a return for information imparted, he invariably

*These lectures are given in the first volume of the Essays and Observa⚫ tions, etc., of John Hunter,' 8vo, 2 vols. Van Voorst,