Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

third portion was issued, but four years elapsed before the production of the remaining volumes, which are generally considered to contain perhaps the most interesting portion of his work.

In the year 1834, Mr. Owen was appointed to the Chair of Comparative Anatomy in St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and here he numbered among his pupils, who were destined to become distinguished at a future day, Dr. Rymer Jones, Dr. Arthur Farre, and White Cooper. In the course of the following year he married the only daughter of his friend and colleague, William Clift, Esq., Curator of the Hunterian Museum.

In the year 1835, Professor Owen was appointed Hunterian Professor and Conservator of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. He was actively employed as a Member of the Commission of Inquiry into the Health of Towns, as well as of the Metropolis; taking a prominent part in all the great questions of the day, and especially devoting himself to the appointment of the Commission of Inquiry into the State of Smithfield Market. It is believed that to Professor Owen's perseverance in ventilating the evils of this great centre of nuisances, the inhabitants of London are principally indebted for the removal of the Market. As an instance of the remarkable way in which Professor Owen was accustomed to deal with new facts, it may be mentioned that in 1835, Mr. Wormald, of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, transmitted to him a piece of flesh in which he had discovered a new entozoon, chiefly interesting to the sender as a mere curiosity of science. It was pointed out by the Professor to be the now too well known and dreaded Trichina spiralis, which has since been found to infest the human muscles, sometimes to such an extent as to cause death from the pain and inflammation attendant upon the development of numbers of these minute internal parasites. It is this organism which has produced the epidemic Trichinosis, which made fearful ravages in Germany, and its propagation has been demonstrated to be principally brought about by the consumption of raw and diseased pork.

In the year 1836 Professor Owen was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and on the retirement of Sir Charles Bell, to the Professorship of Anatomy and Physiology in the College of Surgeons; he also undertook to deliver lectures on the contents of the Hunterian Museum, which were continued by him down to 1855. His work on Odontography was produced in 1840-1845, consisting of two quarto volumes, in which is contained a comparative investigation of the differences in the microscopical structure of the teeth of every class of animals.

description of a Belemnite from the Oxford clay was honoured by the Royal Society with the Royal Medal.

After devoting a considerable part of his life to the elucidation and illustration of the labours of John Hunter, Professor Owen resigned in 1856 the curatorship of the Hunterian Collection, and was appointed by the Trustees of the British Museum to be Superintendent of the Departments of Natural History. This post, which involves the superintendence of the three great branches of Zoology, Geology, and Mineralogy, Professor Owen still retains, adorning by his extensive and comprehensive knowledge of the subjects specially characteristic of these departments, a position which naturally, from the great responsibility which attaches to the office, is one of very great distinction: one, in fact, which has never been bestowed on anyone before. On the state and advancement of these great departments he has made, in his capacity as Superintendent, many reports, which will be found printed in the annual returns to the House of Commons. It has been considered by him, judging from the estimated numbers of known specimens of natural history and the ratio of additions in past years, that adequate space for the exhibition of the several species would require a building covering as large an area as two acres and a half, while to be prepared for future extensions a greater amount of room would be required. The new buildings at South Kensington, which are in a very forward state of erection, will probably be found amply sufficient to meet the views of Professor Owen, but it would perhaps be impossible to determine the point until we are able to see the objects themselves arranged in their new, and let us hope final, resting place.

In 1851, Professor Owen directed his energies to the organisation of the Great Exhibition, and as President of one of the Juries, his services were of great value towards the success of that speculation.

The Commissioners of the Exhibition of 1855, at Paris, also availed themselves of his services in a similar manner; his journey to the French capital on that occasion being undertaken at the request of the Government. In that year one of the greatest works of Professor Owen was published, viz., “The Principles of Comparative Osteology," in French. In 1866-68 he published his "Anatomy of the Vertebrates" in three volumes, richly illustrated. Professor Owen was one of the founders of the Microscopical Society and first occupied the presidential chair. He was also President of the British Association at the Leeds meeting, 1857. Among the foreign distinctions which have been conferred on him are the dignity of Chevalier of the Order of Merit of Prussia. He is also

one of the eight foreign correspondents of the Institute of France, and has received from the Emperor of the French the Order of the Legion of Honour. The King of Italy conferred upon him the Order of St. Maurice and St. Lazare. The King of the Belgians, and the Emperor of Brazil have also decorated Professor Owen with orders; and Her Most Gracious Majesty accorded to him the privilege of a residence in Richmond Park, and the title of Companion of the Bath.

As an example of the fertility of the brain of this most indefatigable of modern scientific pioneers, it may be interesting to know that for very many years of the present century Professor Owen has contributed unceasingly to the Journals and Transactions of a large number of societies, among which may be specified the Royal, Linnean, Geological, Zoological, Cambridge Philosopical, Medico-chirurgical, Odontological, and Microscopical Societies. There are also some elaborately prepared reports on "British Fossil Reptiles," from his pen in the Transactions of the British Association, the "Annals and Magazine of Natural History," and the "Geological Magazine."

Among his latest works we may mention a "Description of the Fossil Reptilia of South Africa," 1876, in quarto, published by the Trustees of the British Museum; his "Researches on the Fossil Mammalia of Australia, and Fossil Marsupials of England," in two volumes quarto, 1877. Professor Owen is also about to issue his great illustrated work on "The Extinct Wingless Birds of New Zealand.”

But the catalogue of works by Professor Owen would somewhat tire the patience of our readers. The new catalogue of printed books in the British Museum contains upwards of sixty entries relating to works published by him, among which are several general essays, as, for example, a discourse "On the Extent and Aims of a National Museum of Natural History," wherein the necessity of a great collection of specimens, arranged in the most liberal manner as regards classification and spacing, is set forth; and another discourse of the most instructive kind is that entitled "Instances of the Power of God, as Manifested in His Animal Creation." The gorilla, the dodo, the aye-aye, the pearly nautilus, the ornithorhynchus, the megatherium, the wingless birds of New Zealand, and many others of the most striking objects of the animal kingdom, have been noticed and described by Professor Owen, in that wonderfully clear, acute, and forcible language which he has so readily at his command. But it is chiefly upon his researches into the marvels of paleontology that his fame rests.

For to few has it ever been given, and to none in a more happy and

fortunate way than to him, to re-create, if we may use such a word, or at any rate to reconstruct out of the slenderest and apparently most insufficient data, the denizens of our antediluvian earth. How many creatures has he not rehabilitated and built up for us from the merest fragments of their skeletons? The contemplation of a fragment of a thigh bone from New Zealand has led, when passed through the crucible of his inductive thought, to the restoration of a gigantic bird eleven feet in height, or about double the stature of an ordinary mortal. The well known but once mysterious fossil Belemnite, in his hands takes its proper form and place in the order of Cephalopoda; in a word, from Professor Owen's expositions, the dry bones of bygone mons become re-instinct with life, and the uninteresting intricacies of comparative anatomy become endowed with an all-absorbing interest and fascination which few can withstand, in order that-as Quintilian so neatly expresses himself-"quantum ad cognitionem pertinet rerum, etiam praeteritis saeculis vixisse videamur." To read aright the history of the world in its oldest phases, in its most mysterious aspects, and from its deepest scientific points of view, the manifold works of Professor Owen must be taken in hand and studied with patience; and the reward to the mind of the reader, as far as enlightenment of the grandest and most instructive kind avails anything, cannot fail to be proportionate to the amount of time and consideration given to the perusal of his great practical lessons to us upon our position in the cosmos of infinity.

W. DE G. B.

THE RIVER'S ROMANCE.

Once upon a summer day

With a hey and a ho down derry-
A minstrel wandered on his way,
And thus he sang his joyous lay
By the river side so merry:
Singing to the singing river,
"River, River,

Sing for ever :

Let my life flow like thy stream
All a sunny summer dream."

Down the stream there stole a maid-
With a hey and a ho down derry-

Beneath a drooping willow's shade

Where the moaning waters darkly strayed,
And thus she sang so dreary,
Singing to the murmuring river,
"River, River

Why for ever

Flows my life in sorrow still

Like thy waters dark and chill?”

The joyous minstrel tripped along

With a hey and a ho down derry

The welkin echoed to his song,

Until he came where, the boughs among,
The maiden sat so dreary,
Sighing to the sighing river;
But the river

Flowed on ever,

Heard the sigh and heard the song
And, heeding neither, flowed along.

The minstrel looked upon the maid

With a hey and a ho down derryHis hand upon the boughs he laid And drew aside the willow's shade And let in the sunlight cheery : Singing to her by the river, "Life's a river

Changeful ever.

Into the sunshine come with me

And both our lives shall happy be."

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »