LIFE OF SIR RICHARD OWEN.*

Mn. OWEN in his biography of his grandfather has put together, from the material at his command, a striking record of a character marked by unusual gifts of acute- ness and skill and ingenuity, and of a life devoted in untiring industry to the furtherance of a great branch of scientific investigation. It is in this direction rather than as a scientific memoir in the strict sense of the term, that the chief interest of these volumes lies. It is Mr. Owen's misfortune that he is better qualified by his relationship than by scientific attainments, for the task of doing full justice to his grandfather's career, and thus, whilst 0 wen's character and the social side and general interests of his life are clearly brought out, we miss that wider treatment of the subject which should link the biographical details with

• Life of Richard Owen. By las Grandson, Bey. Wchwd Owen. London : Jain Murray.

the history of scientific distinction, and should bring out the range and significance of Owen's work as a whole, of which his marvellous reconstructions from fragmentary fossil remains made so effective a part. In the absence of this element in the biography, the interesting and characteristic chapter con- tributed by Professor Huxley, on Owen's position in the history of anatomical science, is the more welcome. Indeed, it might well have stood as an introduction to the biography as a whole, instead of appearing as a supplementary chapter or appendix. Professor Huxley is both appreciative and discriminating in his discussion of Owen's anatomical and palmontological achievements, though, as might be antici- pated, he is precise in limiting Owen's right to be considered a permanent scientific authority in the branch of so-called "philosophical anatomy" :—

"If I mistake not," he says, "the historian of comparative anatomy and of palmmatology will always assign to Owen a place next to, and hardly lower than that of Cuvier, who was practically the creator of those sciences in their modern shape.

It was not uncommon to hear our countryman called the British Cusier,' and so far, in my judgment, the collocation was justified, high as is the praise it implies?'

It is carious, remembering how brilliant was Owen's after career, that no indications of any strong natural bent, no boyish

love of natural history, no special quickness of observation, should be recalled by those who knew him as a child. Indeed, the record of his early years is singularly devoid of interest.

Owen was born in 1804, at Lancaster, his father being a West India merchant—a "typical John Bull," we are told, bluff, burly, and obstinate, who died whilst his son was yet a child —his mother, a lady of a Provencal Huguenot family. The boy was sent to Lancaster Grammar School, where he had Wheweri for a schoolfellow. His sister wrote of him at this time, that he was " sma2 and slight, and exceedingly mischievous," and one of his masters could find nothing more encouraging to say of him than that he was lazy and impudent, and would come to no good end. At sixteen he was apprenticed to a surgeon in Lancaster, and to this period belong two stories of dissecting experiences, told not in the best taste, which might well have been omitted from the book. In 1824 he went to study at Edinburgh, and the year following came to London, where he arrived a clever, capable, ambitious lad, with no friends, but with an introduction to Abernethy, which procured him a post in the dissecting-room at St. Bar- tholomew's, where his skill in dissection soon displayed itself.

In 1826, he set up as a medical practitioner near Lincoln's Inn Fields, getting a little practice among the lawyers. But the first step in his fortune was made when through Abernethy's influence, he was appointed assistant-curator to the Museum of the College of Surgeons, under William Clift, who had been a favourite pupil of Hunter's. This appointment gave

free play to what were to prove Owen's special and remark- able gifts, and from this time, first as assistant, and later as

curator of the Museum, he devoted all his energy and skill and industry to the task of bringing order and system into the Hunted= collections, which were still in the chaotic state in which they had been handed over by the State to the College of Surgeons. In 1830,0 wen made the acquaintance of Cuvier, during the visit of the latter to London,-0 wen's facility in French, which he had gained from his mother, rendering him the one person who could do the honours of the Museum to the distinguished visitor. A year later, he visited Cuvier in Paris, where he was made free of Cavier's collections and laboratory, and where it is probable that he received the definitive impulse towards what was to be his most enduring and characteristic work. It was on his return from Paris that he brought out the memoir on the Pearly Nautilus, which laid the foundation of his reputation as a rising man among the younger generation of scientific workers. From this time began a life of untiring and varied and successful labour. In 1837 he was appointed Hunterian Professor, his gifts of scientific exposition attracting to his lectures many besides scientific hearers. His unflagging energy and readiness to take up new work brought him posts on various commissions and committees of inquiry on sanitary questions. As a popular lecturer on natural science, in days when popular lectures were rarer and more exciting experiences, his name grew to be a familiar one in London and provincial lecture- rooms. Later still, in 1856, when he became head of the natural-history department of the British Museum—a post which he held until his retirement, at the age of eighty, in 1884—besides the scope that this appointment gave to his enthusiasm for the enrichment of the national collections, and their proper arrangement and accommodation, he became, both in the wider London world of literary and social dis- tinction and in the vaguer popular estimation, the representa, tive, as it were, par excellence, of science, a position which, it is plain, was not altogether without its charms for him. In this latter character he became the man to whom people with odd questions and strange requests naturally addressed them- selves. The fee to be paid a firm of Bath surgeons who had undertaken to embalm the body of Beckford the collector, the nature of a tooth unexpectedly found in a sausage, the merits of a volume of MS. poetry, the presentation to a living or the nomination to a commission in the army,—such are a few specimens of the matters on which he was expected to give a decision or procure a favour. On the sea-serpent, of whose claims to existence he was inclined to dispose somewhat peremptorily, he was for long the accredited authority. In this aspect he was commemorated in Punch,—" Who killed the sea-serpent? I,' said Professor Owen." But "scotched, not killed," was Owen's comment. Bones, of course, of every kind, rare and common, constantly found their way to him. An amusing story is told of an application from Lord John Russell :—

"A footman came over from Pembroke Lodge with a large bone wrapped up in paper, and a note from Lord John Russell requesting Owen to let him know to what animal the bone belonged. The Professor looked at it, and at a glance perceived that it was the ham-bone of an ordinary pig. The description was transferred to paper, and the footman returned to Pembroke

Lodge Some days passed, and hearing nothing from Lord John, he walked over on a Sunday afternoon to ask for an explanation. The fact is,' Lord John said, President Grant made me a present of what purported to be a bear's ham, which is considered a great delicacy; but as I had my doubts about it, I sent you the bone."

Owen's position and sociable tastes, as well as his constant residence in or near London, brought him the acquaintance of most of his contemporaries of note. In his journals, amid a good deal that is trivial, the mention occurs of many names, more or less famous, each with some characteristic comment or anecdote attached :—Buckland, Murchison, Lyell, Agassiz, Livingstone, are but a few we find scattered up and down his pages. Guizot appears as a "plain, business-looking old man,—keen-looking, his thumbs stuck into his waistcoat sleeves-holes ;" but ready of wit, as the following little encounter shows :—"I was brought forward," Owen says, "and was introduced as the envier of England (I wish they would allow me to be the Owen of England), when Guizot politely bowing, said he was glad to find there was a envier in England. Not bad that, but rather sly." And among many more, we have Adam Sedgwick, with his fierce thoughts of writing a review of "that beastly book, The Vestiges of Creation ;" and Cardinal Wiseman, whose pomp and magnificence in scarlet robes excited Owen's astonished admiration ; and Carlyle, who spoke of Owen as "the tall man with great glittering eyes," and from whom Owen received the hazardous honour of a compliment, as one of the "few men who was neither a fool nor a humbug."

A story is told of Turner, affording so curious and charac- teristic a glimpse of the great painter that it is worth inser- tion in full. Owen, together with a friend, had been invited by Turner to visit him at his house in Queen Anne Street, and thither they went on a hot August day :—

" When they arrived at the door, they waited some time before their ring at the bell was answered. At last an elderly person opened the door a few inches, and asked them suspiciously what they wanted. They replied that they wished to see Mr. Turner. The door was immediately shut in their faces ; but after a time the person came back to say that they might enter. When they got into the hall, she showed them into a room, and forthwith shut the door upon them. They then discovered with some dismay that this apartment was in total darkness, with the blinds down and the shutters up. After a prolonged interval, they were told they might go upstairs. Upon arriving at the topmost story, they perceived Turner standing before several easels, and taking his colours from a circular table, which he swung round to get at the paints he required. He was painting several pictures at once, passing on from one to the other, and applying to each in its turn the particular colour he was using, till it was exhausted. After showing them all that there was to be seen, Turner vouchsafed the explanation of the treatment they had experienced upon entering the house. He said that the bright light outside would have spoilt their eyes for properly appreciating the pictures, and that to see them to advantage, a period of darkness was necessary."

At this stage of the interview, Owen's friend left :— " And then an event took place which Owen declares that none of his artist friends would ever believe. Turner offered him a glass of wine! It was while they were going downstairs that he first observed symptoms of an inward struggle going on in Turner's bosom. When they were passing a little cupboard on the landing this struggle had reached a climax. Finally, Turner said, Will you—will you have a glass of wine ?' This offer having been accepted, after a good deal of groping in the cup- board a decanter was produced, of which the original glass stopper had been replaced by a cork, with the remains of some sherry at the bottom. This Owen duly consumed, and shortly afterwards took his leave, with many expressions of the pleasure that this visit had afforded him, and a disturbing conviction that the sherry might lurk indefinitely in his system."

We naturally look with considerable interest to see what is said of the position which Owen took up in regard to the most

important scientific event of his time, the publication of the Origin of Species. His attitude towards Darwin, though a friendly one personally, was singular in its guarded and

enigmatical reception of the Origin. "How curious I shall be to know what line Owen will take ! Dead against it, I fear," wrote Darwin in 1859, when his book was on the eve of appearing. And even now, with Owen's biography

before us, it is hard to make out what his true attitude was. The truth seems to have been that Owen was reluctant to commit himself. His mind, in spite of its singular acuteness and wide experience, was not one specially adapted to appreciate the full significance of Darwin's great hypothesis, whilst he had, in some measure at any rate, put

forward suggestions of his own, with which Darwin's principle clashed. "if not dead against the theory of natural selec- tion," in his biographer's words, "Owen at first looked askance at it, preferring the idea of the great scheme of Nature which he had himself advanced." And beyond this point it is impossible to gain from the biography any definite idea as to what his final conclusion was.

But no hesitation on Owen's part in venturing upon the examination of the wider issues which Darwin's scientific investigations thus set before him—whether it was derived from intellectual limitations or from other causes—ought to be allowed to detract from the excellence and enduring worth of his work in its own special direction. His name is linked with the history of the advance of science during the last sixty years. No better memorial of it could be wished than the great museum at South Kensington, with which he was for so long closely identified, and which, in great measure through his exertions, has helped to stimulate that widened and popular interest in natural science which, is one of the characteristic features of our times.