RICHARD OWEN, M.D., F.R.S., D.C.L., F.L.S., ETC., SUPERINTENDENT OF THE NATURAL HISTORY DEPARTMENTS, RICHARD OWEN, the youngest son of the late Richard Owen, Esq., of Fulmer Place, Bucks., was born at Lancaster, July 20th, 1804. He received his classical and mathematical education at the Grammar School of Lancaster, under the Rev. Jos. Rowley, M.A., and the Rev. John Beethom, M.A., and his scientific education at the University of Edinburgh and the Medical School of St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. He matriculated at Edinburgh in 1824, and, besides the professorial courses in the university (the third Monro, on anatomy and physiology; Jameson, on natural history; Hope, on chemistry; Alison, on the institutes of medicine, etc.), he attended the lectures on anatomy by Dr. Barclay, and the summer course on comparative anatomy given by the same learned professor at his private school. Here also Mr. Owen heard the first course of lectures delivered by Dr. Robert Knox, who became the successor to Dr. Barclay. During his studentship at Edinburgh Mr. Owen assisted in founding the "Hunterian Society" for communications and discussions on medical and physiological subjects by students of the university, the professors granting the use of a room for that purpose. Of this Society, which we believe still flourishes, Owen was elected president in 1825. He appears to have gone up for his examination at the Royal College of Surgeons in London soon after his arrival in the metropolis; the date of his membership of the College in the official list being 1826, that of his fellowship, 1843. Mr. Owen commenced private practice as a surgeon in Serle Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, in 1827, and communicated cases to the Medical Society 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 deepseated 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 intrusted 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, to which body the famous collections of John Hunter, purchased by Parliament in 1799, had been transferred. 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, theDescriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Physiological Series of Comparative Anatomy,' of the Hunterian Collection, which then occupied the gallery of the single muscum 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. 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,' 'Of the Armadillo,' and some other rare animals, 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 gratification" 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 |