The Palace and Park by Phillips, Forbes, Latham, Owen, Scharf, and Shenton

[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.]