[Born at Lancaster, 1804. Still living.]
Owen, Faraday, and Herschell are England’s living representatives of
science, and are so esteemed throughout Europe. Comparative anatomy,
founded by Cuvier, has been perfected by Owen, and to him is due the
great merit of raising that science in England to a position that
commands the gratitude and admiration of the whole scientific world.
This illustrious philosopher commenced life as a midshipman, but his
career was quickly arrested by the close of the American war in 1813. In
order to re-enter the profession, he adopted the medical profession, and
became the pupil of Mr. Baxendale, a surgeon in Lancaster. In 1824, he
matriculated in Edinburgh. In 1825, he came to London, and passed the
Royal College of Surgeons in 1826. Under the advice of his friend,
Abernethy, Owen gave up all thoughts of the navy, and accepted an
appointment at the College of Surgeons, where for ten years he laboured
at completing the catalogue of John Hunter’s magnificent museum. The
enormous labour was achieved in 1840. Since that time every form of
animal life, from the Sponge to the Man, has been submitted to his
sagacious mind, and upon every subject he has thrown illumination. The
mere enumeration of his contributions to the literature of natural
history would in itself be a task. His “Treatise on the Homologies of
the Vertebral Skeleton” has been received with great favour by
anatomists and physiologists. His histories of “British Fossil Mammals
and Birds,” and of “Fossil Reptiles,” the treatise “On the Nature of
Limbs,” on “Parthenogenesis, or the successive production of procreative
individuals from a single ovum,” have each brought fresh laurels to his
brow. Cuvier asked, “Why should not natural history one day have its
Newton?” We answer, “It has found Richard Owen.”
[By E. H. Baily, R.A. 1840.]