declined, save on the conditions of permission to transfer the gift to some public museum. All that were suitable as additions to the Hunterian collection were presented to the College. In 1845, the strain of labour producing its effects, Owen availed himself of the exceptional privilege of eight weeks' vacation to visit Italy. He accompanied Robert Brown and the Baron von Buch to Naples, to the meeting of Italian Naturalists held there in that year, and visited the principal cities and museums of Italy. He was everywhere received with marked distinction. At Rome he was the guest of Prince Charles Lucien Bonaparte, at the Palazzo Bonaparte, at that period containing the Natural History collections of the distinguished author of the 'Fauna Italica.' At Florence, Professor Owen was the guest of the Grand Duke, who desired him to select any subject or series of specimens of wax-models from the laboratory for which Florence has long been famous, and which was then presided over by the accomplished anatomist and artist Signor Luigi Calamai. Professor Owen signified his preference for the series illustrating the anatomy of the Torpedo; and at the same time intimated his wish that they should be donations to the museum of the College, explaining the principle on which he had refrained from commencing any private collection. The Grand Duke graciously acceded thus far, that the donation being intended as a mark of esteem for the Professor, he was to regard them as a gift to himself, with liberty to transfer the specimens as his own donation, if he thought them suitable, to the Museum of the College of Surgeons. On the arrival of this beautiful series of wax-models, Professor Owen accordingly presented them to the College.

The original museum in which Owen commenced his labours at the College, in 1828, was a single, rather heavily ornamented, and not well-lit apartment, with one gallery. In 1835 a more spacious and better-lit hall, with two galleries, designed by Mr., afterwards Sir C. Barry, was substituted for it; to this were added a second, similar but smaller hall; and a third, larger hall; the whole museum, at the conclusion of Owen's curatorship, in 1856, affording at least ten times the amount of exhibition space, and every portion of it well filled.

The proportion of Mr. Owen's labours devoted to the elucidation of those of his great precursor John Hunter, will ever constitute an element in the estimate of his character. There are

few examples in the history of science of the devotion of so much labour, by an original investigator, and not a mere commentator, to the reputation of a predecessor.

Some of Hunter's published papers had been collected in his lifetime from the Philosophical Transactions to constitute the work entitled 'Observations on certain parts of the Animal Economy,' 4to, 1786. Professor Owen added to these papers every other on cognate subjects that Hunter had published, or sanctioned the publication of, during his lifetime, together with the "Croonian Lectures" which had been read before the Royal Society from 1776 to 1782, and brought them out in an octavo edition. The Animal Economy' thus enlarged, with a preface descriptive of Hunter's real discoveries, which had been more or less misunderstood or overlooked by previous commentators, was published in 1837. The evidence given by Mr. Clift before the Parliamentary Committee on Medical Education had revealed the fact that, during the period between the demise of Hunter (of whom Clift was the last articled apprentice or pupil) in 1793, and the purchase of the "Collection" in 1799, he had availed himself of the manuscripts remaining with the museum in his care, to copy portions of them for his instruction. The portions selected being chiefly those on comparative anatomy and physiology, removed by Home in 1800, and afterwards destroyed. Certain extracts from these copies were communicated by Clift to Owen during the formation of the Physiological Catalogue, and added, by Mr. Clift's permission, as 'Notes' (vol. iii. p. v. etc.). On the demise of Mr. Clift, these transcripts came into Owen's possession, and he published them in two octavo volumes, entitled 'Essays and Observations on Natural History, Anatomy, etc., by John Hunter' (1861). The labours by which they were prepared for press are briefly detailed in the preface. The original copies by Clift were deposited by Owen in the library of the Royal College of Surgeons; and in the dedication of this work "to the Fellows and Members of the Royal College of Surgeons in England," Owen speaks of it as "the last of his labours in making known the thoughts and works of the founder of Philosophical Surgery."

The more congenial labour of comparing the Hunterian preparations with recent dissections, chiefly of exotic animals supplied by the Zoological Society, is at once the key to the secret of Owen's attainment of such profound knowledge of comparative

anatomy, and the reason why most of his papers have appeared in the Transactions of that Society; while the dissection of so many animals enabled him to enrich the Hunterian series with many contributions, supplying defective links or affording further valuable demonstrations.

The first paper communicated by Mr. Owen to the Royal Society was on the mammary glands of that strange duck-billed quadruped the Ornithorhynchus paradoxus; it was published in the Philosophical Transactions in 1832. This was followed by another, on the ova of the same animal, in 1834.

Some discussion with the famous Geoffroy St. Hilaire, who maintained the oviparity and non-mammiferous nature of the Ornithorhynchus, ensued. But Owen's inference from the structure of the ovisac, of the corpus luteum and of the uterine ovum, that the latter must be developed in utero, and the young be born alive, has been adopted in physiology. He was elected "Corresponding Member" of the Academy of Sciences, Institute of France. The problem still remained how a quadruped, with a beak like a duck, and without a nipple, could suck. In 1834 Professor Owen received specimens of apparently new-born Ornithorhynchi, which he minutely described in a paper printed in the Transactions of the Zoological Society.' The beak was soft and short, the mouth adapted to be applied to the areola on which the milk-ducts terminate, and to receive the milk that would be injected into the mouth by a muscle surrounding the large mammary gland. Professor Owen's next step was to settle the questions undecided on the generation of the marsupial animals, viz. the period of uterine gestation, the exact condition of the new-born young, the mode of its passage to the external pouch, and the term of its suspension there. For this purpose he took advantage of the collection of kangaroos, then living at the establishment of the Zoological Society at Kingston; the impregnated females being transferred, for better observation, to the gardens in Regent's Park.

The account of these experiments is contained in the Philosophical Transactions for 1834. It is to these investigations we owe the knowledge of the state of the new-born kangaroo (Macropus major). But an inch long, naked and blind, with hind legs shorter than its fore legs, the very reverse of the adult, it is transferred, after thirty-eight days' gestation, by its mother's lips to her nipple within her pouch, where it clings and hangs for a period of

six months, afterwards using the pouch only for shelter, and occasionally feeding.

In the Philosophical Transactions for 1837, the memoir on the brain of the Marsupialia was published, recording the absence of the corpus callosum. This was followed by the articles "Monotremata" and "Marsupialia" in the Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology,' showing, among other characteristics, a similar cerebral structure in the Ornithorhynchus and Echidna. Two papers in the Zoological Transactions, "On the Osteology" and "On the Classification of the Marsupialia," completed the grounds for forming a primary group or subclass of the Marsupial and Monotrematous Mammals, for which the names Implacentalia or Lyencephala were proposed.

Pursuing his researches into the correlations of the cerebral with other systems of organs in the mammalia, Professor Owen was led to associate the Cuvierian orders or tribes, Edentata, Rodentia, Insectivora, and Cheiroptera, into a second "subclass" called Lissencephala, from the smooth unconvoluted character of the cerebrum. The Cetacea, Pachydermata, Ruminantia, Carnivora, Quadrumana form a third subclass-Gyrencephala, or with convoluted brains. The superior development of the human cerebrum, zoologically marked by its extension over and beyond the cerebellum with concomitant structures in the posterior lobe, called in human anatomy "hippocampus minor," etc. afforded the characters of a fourth equivalent group in the classification on the brain-system, which is called " Archencephala." Cuvier, pointing to the "feet" as fitted for erect stature, and "hands" for perfect manipulation, affirmed them to be peculiar to man, and founded thereon the order Bimana. But modified homologues or rudiments of the thumb, great-toe, hinder lobe of the cerebrum, etc., occur in certain species of the lower group approximating the higher one; to the objection to his cerebral classification that some of the highest Gyrencephala possessed what might be called rudiments of a "hippocampus," etc., Professor Owen replied by contrasting those parts as they existed in the gorilla, chimpanzee, etc., and in the human subject. It was as absurd to suppose that he denied the existence of the parts which Tiedemann, Vrolik, and Kuhl had pointed out, as that Cuvier denied the existence of the homologue of the great toe in the orang. The graduation of structures in the chain of living beings affords similar grounds of

attack against all systems of classification, which, nevertheless, are indispensable to the comprehension of the science of animals and plants.

In 1847 Professor Owen published the facts and reasons for a re-distribution of the Pachydermata and Ruminantia of Cuvier into the Ungulata with hoofs in equal number (Artiodactyla), and into those with hoofs in unequal number (Perissodactyla). The Artiodactyles were subdivided into ruminants and non-ruminants, numerous extinct species being shown to have filled up the intervals that now exist; while in like manner the Horse tribe, the Solipedes of Cuvier, were shown to be more closely allied to the tapir and rhinoceros by other intermediate Perissodactyles of geological ages than would appear by the examination of living species only.

In regard to the Quadrumanous family, which makes the nearest approach to man, but little was known, and that imperfectly, at the close of Cuvier's labours. The orang-utan was placed at the head of the order, and both this and the chimpanzee were known to the great naturalist only in their immature condition. The osteological and dental characters of the adults of both forms were made known by Owen in a series of memoirs in the Zoological Transactions for 1835 and 1836, proving that the chief characters supposed to approximate these animals to man are transitory, and peculiar to the young state of the animal with deciduous teeth. The chimpanzee is placed above the orang; both are characterized in the adult state by a sexual distinction in the teeth. A smaller species of Bornean orang (Pithecus Morio) is defined: the larger one (Pithecus Wurmbii) had been supposed, from its huge canines and low facial angle, to be a baboon.

In 1847 Professor Owen's opinion was sought by an American missionary at the Gaboon, as to the skull of a large baboon-like quadrumane, of which Dr. Savage transmitted a drawing: in this was recognized a new species allied to the chimpanzee. It was described by Dr. Savage under the name of the "Gorilla," which name Professor Owen adopted, though aware of the improbability of its being the ape so called by Hanno. In a series of elaborate memoirs in the Zoological Transactions and Proceedings, from 1848 to 1862, the osteology, dentition, with the external and other characters of the gorilla, are described by Owen, and compared with the chimpanzee, Papuan, and Negro. Our anatomist con

VOL. I.

I