to the most important practical purposes.' His services to science were further acknowledged by Her Majesty conferring upon him the honour of knighthood (1868), and the university of Edinburgh awarding him the honorary degree of LL.D. DR BUCKLAND-SIR CHARLES LYÈLL, ETC. Geology has had a host of discoverers and illustrators. One of the earliest of English geologists was MR WILLIAM SMITH, who published his Tabular View of the British Strata in 1790, and constructed a geological map of England in 1815. He had explored the whole country on foot. The first of the prize-medals of the Geological Society was awarded to that gentleman in 1831, in consideration,' as stated, of his being a great original discoverer in English gcology, and especially for his having been the first in this country to discover and to teach the identification of strata, and to determine their succession by means of their imbedded fossils.'* teresting work. But though introducing recent facts, Sir Charles still adhered to his original theory, that the forces now operating upon and beneath the earth's surface, are the same both in kind and degree with those which, at remote epochs, have worked out geological revolutions; or, in other words, that we may dispense with sudden, violent, and general catastrophes, and regard the ancient and present fluctuations of the organic and inorganic world as belonging to one continuous and uniform series of events. In 1838 Sir Charles published his Elements of Geology, since enlarged to two volumes. He is author also of Travels in North America, with Geological Observations on the United States, Canada, and Nova Scotia, two volumes, 1845; and Second Visit to the United States of America in 1845, two volumes, 1849. These are agreeable as well as instructive volumes, for Sir Charles was an accomplished literary artist, without betraying art in his composition. This eminent geologist was a native of the county of Forfar, born November 14, 1797, son of a Scottish landed proprietor The REV. DR BUCKLAND (1784-1856), by his of the same name. He was created a baronet in Vindicia Geologica, 1820, and Reliquiæ Dilu- 1864; and received the honorary degree of D.C.L viana, 1823, and by various contributions to the from the university of Oxford. His great work, Geological Society, awakened public interest to The Principles of Geology, first elevated geology the claims of this science, although he advocated to the dignity of a science, and his latest important the old hypothesis of the universality of the work on the Antiquity of Man, 1863, has also had deluge, which he abandoned in his Bridgewater great influence on the thought and speculation of Treatise of 1836. His Geology and Mineralogy the present generation. Sir Charles died 22d Januwas reprinted in 1858, with additions by Pro-ary 1875, and was interred in Westminster Abbey. fessors Owen and Phillips, and a memoir of the author by his son, Mr Francis T. Buckland. The indomitable energy of Buckland, in pursuing his researches and collecting specimens of organic remains, is brought out fully in this memoir, with an account of his exertions to procure the endowment of a Readership in Geology at Oxford, which he accomplished in 1819. His invaluable museum he bequeathed to the university. It may be noted, also, that the glacial theory, illustrated by Agassiz and Professor James Forbes, was first promulgated by Dr Buckland, who travelled over the north of England and the wilds of Scotland for proofs of glacial action. Sir Robert Peel rewarded the labours of this ardent man of science by procuring his appointment to the deanery of Westminster. In its now revised and improved form, with additional plates of organic remains, Buckland's Geology and Mineralogy is the best general work on this interesting study. Previous to its first publication, Mr, afterwards SIR CHARLES LYELL, had published Principles of Geology, being an Attempt to Explain the former Changes of the Earth's Surface by a Reference to Causes now in Operation, two volumes, 1830-32. Additions and corrections have been made from time To select another example; we find in certain localito time, and the eighth edition of the Principles, ties subterranean deposits of coal, consisting of vegetable entirely revised, 1850, is a very complete and in-matter formerly drifted into seas and lakes. These seas *This, however, had been clearly indicated more than a century before by the mathematician and natural philosopher, DR ROBERT HOOKE (1635-1703). In a lecture dated 1688, and published in Hooke's posthumous works, there occurs this striking prophetic passage; However trivial a thing a rotten shell may appear to some, yet these monuments of nature are more certain tokens of antiquity than coins or medals, since the best of those may be counterfeited or made by art and design; . . . and though it must be granted that it is very difficult to read them-the records of nature and to raise a chronology out of them, and to state the intervals of time wherein such or such catastrophe and mutations have happened, yet it is not impossible.-See Lyell's Principles, vol. i., in which the history of geological science is traced. Conybeare's Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales. Also Geology compared to History. We often discover with surprise, on looking back into the chronicles of nations, how the fortune of some battle has influenced the fate of millions of our contemporaries, when it has long been forgotten by the mass of the population. With this remote event, we may find inseparstate, the language now spoken by the inhabitants, their ably connected the geographical boundaries of a great peculiar manners, laws, and religious opinions. But far more astonishing and unexpected are the connections brought to light, when we carry back our researches into the history of nature. The form of a coast, the configuration of the interior of a country, the existence and extent of lakes, valleys, and mountains can often be traced to the former prevalence of earthquakes and volcanoes in regions which have long been undisturbed. To these remote convulsions, the present fertility of some districts, the sterile character of others, the elevation of land above the sea, the climate, and various peculiarities, may be distinctly referred. On the other often be ascribed to the operation, at a remote era, of hand, many distinguishing features of the surface may slow and tranquil causes-to the gradual deposition of sediment in a lake or in the ocean, or to the prolific increase of testacea and corals. and lakes have since been filled up; the lands whereon the forests grew have disappeared or changed their form; the rivers and currents which floated the vegetable masses can no longer be traced; and the plants belonged to species which for ages have passed away from the surface of our planet. Yet the commercial prosperity and numerical strength of a nation may now be mainly dependent on the local distribution of fuel determined by that ancient state of things. sciences, as history is to the moral. A historian should, Geology is intimately related to almost all the physical if possible, be at once profoundly acquainted with ethics, politics, jurisprudence, the military art, theology; in a word, with all branches of knowledge by which any insight into human affairs, or into the moral and intellectual nature of man, can be obtained. It would be no less desirable that a geologist should be well versed in chemistry, natural philosophy, mineralogy, zoology, comparative anatomy, botany; in short, in every science relating to organic and inorganic nature. With these accomplishments, the historian and geologist would rarely fail to draw correct philosophical conclusions from the various monuments transmitted to them of former Occurrences. They would know to what combination of causes analogous effects were referrible, and they would often be enabled to supply, by inference, information concerning many events unrecorded in the defective archives of former ages. But as such extensive acquisitions are scarcely within the reach of any individual, it is necessary that men who have devoted their lives to different departments should unite their efforts; and as the historian receives assistance from the antiquary, and from those who have cultivated different branches of moral and political science, so the geologist should avail himself of the aid of many naturalists, and particularly of those who have studied the fossil remains of lost species of animals and plants. The analogy, however, of the monuments consulted in geology, and those available in history, extends no further than to one class of historical monuments-those which may be said to be undesignedly commemorative of former events. The canoes, for example, and stone hatchets found in our peat-bogs, afford an insight into the rude arts and manners of the earliest inhabitants of our island; the buried coin fixes the date of the reign of some Roman emperor; the ancient encampment indicates the districts once occupied by invading armies, and the former method of constructing military defences; the Egyptian mummies throw light on the art of embalming, the rites of sepulture, or the average stature of the human race in ancient Egypt. This class of memorials yields to no other in authenticity, but it constitutes a small part only of the resources on which the historian relies, whereas in geology it forms the only kind of evidence which is at our command. For this reason we must not expect to obtain a full and connected account of any series of events beyond the reach of history. But the testimony of geological monuments, if frequently imperfect, possesses at least the advantage of being free from all suspicion of misrepresentation. We may be deceived in the inferences which we draw, in the same manner as we often mistake the nature and import of phenomena observed in the daily course of nature, but our liability to err is confined to the interpretation, and, if this be correct, our information is certain, The Great Earthquake of Lisbon in 1755. In no part of the volcanic region of Southern Europe has so tremendous an earthquake occurred in modern times as that which began on the 1st of November 1755 at Lisbon. A sound of thunder was heard underground, and immediately afterwards a violent shock threw down the greater part of that city. In the course of about six minutes, sixty thousand persons perished. The sea first retired and laid the bar dry; it then rolled in, rising fifty feet above its ordinary level. The mountains of Arrabida, Estrella, Julio, Marvan, and Cintra, being some of the largest in Portugal, were impetuously shaken, as it were, from their very foundations; and some of them opened at their summits, which were split and rent in a wonderful manner, huge masses of them being thrown down into the subjacent valleys. Flames are related to have issued from these mountains, which are supposed to have been electric; they are also said to have smoked; but vast clouds of dust may have given rise to this appearance. a new quay, built entirely of marble at an immense expense. A great concourse of people had collected there for safety, as a spot where they might be beyond the reach of falling ruins; but suddenly the quay sank down with all the people on it, and not one of the dead bodies ever floated to the surface. A great number of boats and small vessels anchored near it, all full of people, were swallowed up as in a whirlpool. No fragments of these wrecks ever rose again to the surface, and the water in the place where the quay had stood is stated, in many accounts, to be unfathomable; but Whitehurst says he ascertained it to be one hundred fathoms. In this case, we must either suppose that a certain tract sank down into a subterranean hollow, which would cause a 'fault' in the strata to the depth of six hundred feet, or we may infer, as some have done, from the entire disappearance of the substances engulfed, that a chasm opened and closed again. Yet in adopting this latter hypothesis, we must suppose that the upper part of the chasm, to the depth of one hundred fathoms, remained open after the shock. According to the observations made at Lisbon, in 1837, by Mr Sharpe, the destroying effects of this earthquake were confined to the tertiary strata, and were most violent on the blue clay, on which the lower part of the city is constructed. Not a building, he says, on the secondary limestone or the basalt was injured. The great area over which this Lisbon earthquake extended is very remarkable. The movement was most violent in Spain, Portugal, and the north of Africa; but nearly the whole of Europe, and even the West Indies, felt the shock on the same day. A seaport called St Ubes, about twenty miles south of Lisbon, was engulfed. At Algiers and Fez, in Africa, the agitation of the earth was equally violent; and at the distance of eight leagues from Morocco, a village with the inhabitants, to the number of about eight or ten thousand persons, together with all their cattle, were swallowed up. Soon after, the earth closed again over them. The shock was felt at sea, on the deck of a ship to the west of Lisbon, and produced very much the same sensation as on dry land. Off St Lucar, the captain of the ship Nancy felt his vessel so violently shaken, that he thought she had struck the ground, but, on heaving the lead, found a great depth of water. Captain Clark, from Denia, in latitude 36° 24′ N., between nine and ten in the morning, had his ship shaken and strained as if she had struck upon a rock. Another ship, forty leagues west of St Vincent, experienced so violent a concussion, that the men were thrown a foot and a half perpendicularly up from the deck. In Antigua and Barbadoes, as also in Norway, Sweden, Germany, Holland, Corsica, Switzerland, and Italy, tremors and slight oscillations of the ground were felt. The agitation of lakes, rivers, and springs in Great Britain was remarkable. At Loch Lomond, in Scotland, for example, the water, without the least apparent cause, rose against its banks, and then subsided below its usual level. The greatest perpendicular height of this swell was two feet four inches. It is said that the movement of this earthquake was undulatory, and that it travelled at the rate of twenty miles a minute. A great wave swept over the coast of Spain, and is said to have been sixty feet high at Cadiz. At Tangier, in Africa, it rose and fell eighteen times on the coast; at Funchal, in Madeira, it rose full fifteen feet perpendicular above high-water mark, although the tide, which ebbs and flows there seven feet, was then at half-ebb. Besides entering the city and committing great havoc, it overflowed other seaports in the island. At Kinsale, in Ireland, a body of water rushed into the harbour, whirled round several vessels, and poured into the market-place. The most extraordinary circumstance which occurred It was before stated that the sea first retired at at Lisbon during the catastrophe, was the subsidence of | Lisbon; and this retreat of the ocean from the shore 100 753 at the commencement of an earthquake, and its subsequent return in a violent wave, is a common occurrence. In order to account for the phenomenon, Michell imagined a subsidence at the bottom of the sea from the giving way of the roof of some cavity, in consequence of a vacuum produced by the condensation of steam. Such condensation, he observes, might be the first effect of the introduction of a large body of water into fissures and cavities already filled with steam, before there had been sufficient time for the heat of the incandescent lava to turn so large a supply of water into steam, which, being soon accomplished, causes a greater explosion. Geological Notes and Sections were published in 1830 by SIR HENRY THOMAS DE LA BECHE (1796-1855), and in 1832 a Manual of Geology. But his most valuable work is How to Observe: Geology, 1835. In 1851 Sir Henry published another work of the same kind, The Geological Observer. DR GIDEON ALGERNON MANTELL (1788-1852), an English physician, in 1832 published The Fossils of the South Downs, which appeared simultaneously with the great work of Cuvier and Brongniart on the Geology of the Environs of Paris, and described also many of the organic remains of the chalk. Dr Mantell was the original demonstrator of the fresh-water origin of the mass of Wealden beds, and the discoverer of the monster reptile Iguanodon, and other colossal allies. This eminent palæontologist was author of two popular works-The Medals of Creation, and The Wonders of Geology. DR JOHN PYE SMITH (1774-1857), in his work On the Relation between the Holy Scriptures and some parts of Geological Science, 1839, and the distinguished American geologist, DR EDWARD HITCHCOCK, in his Elementary Geology, 1841, anticipated the views of Hugh Miller and others as to the interpretation of the Mosaic account of the creation and delugethe latter being local, not universal. With respect to the deluge, Dr Pye Smith forcibly remarks: 'All land-animals having their geographical regions, to which their constitutional natures are congenial-many of them being unable to live in any other situation-we cannot represent to ourselves the idea of their being brought into one small spot from the polar regions, the torrid zone, and all the other climates of Asia, Africa, Europe, and America, Australia and the thousands of islands-their preservation and provision, and the final disposal of them-without bringing up the idea of miracles more stupendous than any that are recorded in Scripture.' The REV. DR HENRY DUNCAN (1774-1846) of Ruthwell, in Dumfriesshire, is known as the founder of savings-banks in this country, and he was the first to discover the footprints of animals, supposed to be tortoises, on sandstone rocks in a quarry in Dumfriesshire. Dr Buckland, who followed up the search for fossil remains with so much ardour, beautifully remarks of these 'footsteps before the flood :''The historian may have pursued the line of march of triumphant conquerors whose armies trampled down the most mighty kingdoms of the world. The winds and storms have utterly obliterated the ephemeral impressions of their course. Not a track remains of a single foot, or a single hoof of all the countless millions of men and beasts whose progress spread desolation over the earth. But the reptiles that crawled upon the half-finished surface of our infant planet, have left memorials of their passage enduring and indelible.' SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON. SIR RODERICK IMPEY MURCHISON simplified and extended the science of geology, and proved one of its most indefatigable explorers. In the districts of Hereford, Radnor, and Shropshire, large masses of gray-coloured strata rise out from beneath the Old Red Sandstone; and these rocks contain fossils differing from any which were known in the upper deposits. Sir Roderick began to classify these rocks, and after four years' labour, he assigned to them (1835) the name of the Silurian System, as occupying the ancient Roman province of Siluria. Having first, in the year 1833,' says Sir Roderick, separated these deposits into four formations, and shewn that each is characterised by peculiar organic remains, I next divided them (1834-35) into a lower and upper group, both of which, I hoped, would be found applicable to wide regions of the earth. After eight years of labour in the field and the closet, the proofs of the truth of these views were more fully published in the work entitled The Silurian System, 1839. A further explanation of this system, embodying later researches, was published by the author in 1854, entitled Siluria, the History of the Oldest Known Rocks containing Organic Remains. The Lower Silurian Rocks. But The geologist appeals to the book of nature, where its leaves have undergone no great alteration. He sees before him an enormous pile or series of early subaqueous sediment originally composed of mud, sand, or pebbles, the successive bottoms of a former sea, all of which have been derived from pre-existing rocks; and in these lower beds, even where they are little altered, he can detect no remains of former creatures. lying upon them, and therefore evolved after, other strata succeed, in which some few relics of a primeval ocean are discernible, and these again are everywhere succeeded by newer deposits in which many fossils occur. In this way evidences have been fairly obtained, to shew that the sediments which underlie the strata containing the lowest fossil remains constitute, in all countries which have been examined, the natural base or bottom rocks of the deposits termed Silurian. In France, Germany, Spain, and the Mediterranean, in Scandinavia and Russia, the same basis has been found for higher fossiliferous rocks. Many years were spent by Sir Roderick, accompanied part of the time by Professor Sedgwick, in Russia and other countries in geologic explorations; and in 1846 he published The Geology of Russia in Europe and the Ural Mountains, in which he was assisted by E. de Verneuil and Count A. yon Keyserling. Sir Roderick is author of about a hundred separate memoirs, presented to scientific societies, and he had the merit of pointing out the important fact that gold must exist in Australia. This was in 1844, after inspecting some specimens of Australian rocks brought to this country by Count Streleczki, and comparing them with those of the auriferous Ural Mountains with which he was personally well acquainted. His observations were printed the same year (1844) in the journal of the Royal Geographical Society. Two years afterwards, at a geological meeting in Penzance, Sir Roderick urged the superabundant Cornish tin-miners to emigrate to the colony of New South Wales, and there obtain gold from the alluvial soil in the same manner as they extracted tin from the gravel of their native country. Again, in the year 1846, when some specimens of Australian gold ore were sent to him, he addressed a letter to Earl Grey, then secretary for the colonies, stating his views as to the existence of rich gold-fields in the colony.* Sir Roderick also predicted (1854) that 'the present large flow of gold into Europe from those tracts will begin to diminish within a comparatively short period'a result of which we have as yet no indication. The Relative Value of Gold and Silver. The fear that gold may be greatly depreciated in value relatively to silver-a fear which may have seized upon the minds of some of my readers-is unwarranted by the data registered in the crust of the earth. Gold is, after all, by far the most restricted-in its native distribution of the precious metals. Silver and argentiferous lead, on the contrary, expand so largely downwards into the bowels of the rocks, as to lead us to believe that they must yield enormous profits to the skilful miner for ages to come; and the more so in proportion as better machinery and new inventions shall lessen the difficulty of subterranean mining. It may, indeed, well be doubted whether the quantities of gold and silver, procurable from regions unknown to our progenitors, will prove more than sufficient to meet the exigencies of an enormously increased population and our augmenting commerce and luxury. But this is not a theme for a geologist; and I would simply say, that Providence seems to have originally adjusted the relative value of these two precious metals, and that their relations, having remained the same for ages, will long survive all theories. Modern science, instead of contradicting, only confirms the truth of the aphorism of the patriarch Job, which thus shadowed forth the downward persistence of the one and the superficial distribution of the other: Surely there is a vein for the silver. The earth hath dust of gold. ... He Sir Roderick Murchison was by birth a Scottish Highlander, born at Tarradale, Ross-shire-of which his father, Dr Murchison, was proprietorin 1792. He served from 1807 to 1816 in the army, latterly as captain in the 6th Dragoons. He was knighted in 1846, and the emperor of Russia conferred upon him the Grand Cross of the Order of St Stanislaus, with other marks of distinction. He was some years Secretary to the Royal Geological Society, and twice elected president. was also President of the Geographical Society, occupying the chair until a short time before his death. He took the liveliest interest in all geographical discoveries, and his annual addresses to the society were full of information and interesting facts. A baronetcy was conferred upon Sir Roderick in 1866. He died October 22, 1870. A copious life of Sir Roderick was published by his friend Professor Geikie, two volumes, 1875, from which we give two short extracts: Hint to Geologists. If it be true, as Bacon asserted, that writing maketh an exact man,' it is no less true that mapping makes an exact geologist. Without this kind of training, it is not Hargrave's Australia and its Gold-fields, 1855. easy to grasp accurately the details of geological structure, and hence the literature of the science is sadly overloaded with papers and books which, had their authors enjoyed this preliminary discipline, would either not have been written, or would at least have been more worthy of perusal. Murchison wisely resolved not to trust merely to eye and memory, but to record what he saw as accurately as he could upon maps. And there can be no doubt that by so doing he gave his work a precision and harmony which it could never have otherwise possessed, and that, even though still falling into some errors, he was enabled to get a firmer hold of the structure of the country which he had resolved to master than he could have obtained in any other way. For, to make his maps complete, he was driven to look into all manner of out-of-the-way nooks and corners, with which, but for that necessity, he might have been little likely to make acquaintance. It often happens that in such halfhidden places-the course of a mountain torrent, the bottom of a tree-shaded ravine, the gully cut by the frosts and rains of centuries from the face of a lonely hillside-lies the key to the geological structure of the neighbourhood. In pursuit of his quest, therefore, the geologist is driven to double back to and fro over tracts never trodden perhaps by the ordinary tourist, but is many a time amply recompensed by the unexpected insight which this circuitous journeying gives him into the less obtrusive beauties of the landscape. Proposed Purchase of the Island of Staffa. Among the miscellaneous correspondence which the President of the Geological Society carried on, was one regarding a proposed purchase of the island of Staffa. It was represented urgently to Murchison that as the island was likely to come into the market, no more fitting purchaser could be found than the Geological Society of London, and that in the hands of that learned body it would remain as a perpetual monument consecrated to the progress of science. It is needless to say that this project never took shape. There is little sympathy in Britain with any such fanciful notions regarding the acquirement of places of great natural interest by the State or learned societies for the good of the country, and in the cause of scientific progress. Fortunately that fairy isle is too small and too barren to warrant the cost of protecting walls and notices to trespassers, and its wonders are of too solid and enduring a nature to be liable to effacement by the ruthless curiosity of the British tourist. And so it stands amid the lone sea, above the waves which have tunnelled its pillared cliffs, open to all comers, lifting its little carpet of bright green and which are ceaselessly destroying and renewing the beauty of the sculpture they have revealed. PROFESSOR SEDGWICK. The REV. ADAM SEDGWICK endeavoured to substantiate a lower and still older section of rocks than the Silurian-a slaty formation, in part fossiliferous, and of enormous thickness. He applies to this the term 'Cambrian.' The system has, however, met with a dubious acceptance, Sir Roderick Murchison contending that the Cambrian rocks are not inferior in position to the lowest stratified rocks of his Silurian region of Shropshire and the adjacent parts of Montgomeryshire, but are merely extensions of the same strata. Mr Sedgwick was born at Dent, Yorkshire, about the year 1787; in 1809 he was admitted to a Fellowship in Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1818 was appointed Woodwardian Professor of Geology. He is author of A Synopsis of the Classification of the British Paleozoic Rocks, &c., two volumes, quarto, and A Discourse on the Studies of the University of Cambridge, 1850, which was directed against the utilitarian theory of morals, as not merely false in reasoning, but as producing a degrading effect on the temper and conduct of those who adopt it. Professor Sedgwick closed his honoured life at Cambridge in 1873. PROFESSOR OWEN. and Vertebrate Animals, two volumes, 1843-1846; History of British Fossils, Mammals and Birds, 1846; A History of British Fossil Reptiles, five parts, 1840-1851; On Paleontology and On the Megatherium, 1860; On the Gorilla, 1865; On the Dodo, 1866; Zoology, or Instructions for Collecting and Preserving Animals, 1849; and the articles on Zoology, Comparative Anatomy, and Physiology, in Brande's Dictionary of Science; &c. Professor RICHARD OWEN, the great naturalist and Owen's researches and discoveries in comparative anatomist, was, like his contemporary, Professor anatomy are believed to 'form his chief claim to Whewell, a native of Lancaster. When a mere the admiration and gratitude of the civilised boy, he was put to sea as a midshipman, but world.' In this field, his sagacity, or rather his his nautical career was a very brief one. In genius, in hypothesis and generalisation are prehis twentieth year we find him at Edinburgh eminent, and have had no parallel since Cuvier. University, and in the year following he was a One instance of this, the discovery of a fragment student at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. of the femur or thigh-bone of an unknown animal He became a member of the College of Surgeons, from New Zealand, excited much interest. A but his professional prospects were so discouraging seafaring man brought this piece of bone, as he that he resolved on re-entering the navy. He was said, from New Zealand, and offered it for sale. dissuaded from this step by Abernethy, the famous It was taken to Professor Owen, who having surgeon-rough, kind-hearted, and eccentric-looked at it carefully, thought it right to investiand Abernethy procured for him the appointment gate it more narrowly; and after much consideraof colleague or assistant to Mr Clift, the curator of tion, he ventured to pronounce his opinion. This the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. In opinion from almost anybody else would have this capacity, he had to prepare a catalogue of the been, perhaps, only laughed at; for, in the first great museum of John Hunter, which had come place, he said that the bone (big enough to into the possession of the College of Surgeons. suggest that it belonged to an ox) had belonged In order,' it is said, 'to identify the specimens in to a bird; but before people had had time to the Hunterian collection, he was obliged in a recover from their surprise at this announcement, large number of cases to dissect and examine they were greeted by another assertion yet more fresh specimens. In this manner, volume after startling-namely, that it had been a bird without volume of the catalogue appeared, till at the end wings! The incredulity and doubt with which of thirty years the whole was printed-a work of the opinion was received was too great for a time scarcely inferior value and importance to the even for the authority of Professor Owen entirely museum itself this catalogue, which involved the to dispel. But mark the truthfulness of a real examination of nearly four thousand specimens, science; contemplate the exquisite beauty and was illustrated by seventy-eight plates. This accuracy of relation in nature ! By-and-by a great achievement led a contemporary to say: whole skeleton was brought over to this country, Cuvier, with an instinctive prescience, asks, when the opinion of the Professor was converted "Why should not natural history one day have its into an established fact.'* Newton?" and the best proof of the reasonable- graphs on similar gigantic birds was published by ness of that question we hold to be the success Professor Owen, and fossils from Australia of which has attended the last researches of Cuvier's gigantic marsupials, resembling in type those at English successor, justly styled by Humboldt present existing there. Besides his strictly scien"le plus grand anatomiste de son siècle" (Quar- tific investigations, Professor Owen has assisted terly Review). In 1834 Mr Owen was appointed in public and benevolent labours-in inquiries public lecturer to the chair of Comparative Anat- into the health of towns, in the organisation of the omy and Physiology in the College of Surgeons. Great Exhibition of 1851, as well as of the Paris In 1855 he became superintendent or chief of Exhibition, and in various other efforts for the the Natural History department of the British benefit of society. Honours at home and abroad Museum (which includes zoology, geology, and have been showered on the philosophic worker, mineralogy); and his lectures on palæontology, and in his native country all classes, from the on physiology, on extinct animals, &c. have sovereign downwards, are proud of his name and been as popular as they are valuable. 'From fame. the sponge to man, he has thrown light over We subjoin an extract from the History of Britisk every subject he has touched'—and the number Fossils, Mammals and Birds, 1846. When Cuvier of subjects is almost incredible. His contributions found that the remains of the elephants which are to scientific journals, and his separate works, scattered over Europe in the unstratified superamount together to above three hundred! Among ficial deposits, were specifically different from the these we may note-Memoir on the Pearly teeth and bones of the two known existing Nautilus, 1832; Catalogue of the Physiological elephants, this fundamental fact,' says ProSeries of Comparative Anatomy, five volumes, 1833-1840; The Fossil Mammalia collected on the Voyage of the Beagle, 1840; Odontography, or a Treatise on the Comparative Anatomy of the Teeth, two volumes, 1840-1845; The Extinct Gigantic Sloth, 1842; Lectures on the Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the Invertebrate * Memoir of Owen in Knight's Cyclopædia of Biography. * A series of mono MacIlwain's Life of Abernethy. A writer in the Quarteri remember seeing this fragment of the shaft of a femur when it first Review for March 1852, confirms the statement: We well arrived, and hearing the opinion of the Professor (Owen) as to the bird to which it must have belonged. He took a piece of paper and drew the outline of what he conceived to be the complete bone. The fragment, from which alone he deduced his conclusions, was six inches in length, and five inches and a half in its smallest circumference: both extremities had been broken of When a perfect bone arrived, and was laid on the paper, it fitted the outline exactly.' |