Page:Biographies of Scientific Men.djvu/115

 extinct reptiles of Great Britain, on the fossil belemnites from the Oxford clay, on the wading land bird Gastornis Parisiensis, etc., remain well-known classics. In 1877 he published two volumes, Researches on the Fossil Remains of the Extinct Mammals of Australia, with a Notice of the Extinct Marsupials of England, and in 1879 two volumes on the Extinct Wingless Birds of New Zealand; and even as late as 1889 he published monographs on fossil Reptilia and Cetacea. At the age of eighty-five we find Owen at work on his favourite subjects. This certainly upsets Oslerism, or "too old at forty"! And it should be borne in mind that the greatest philosopher of the nineteenth century, Herbert Spencer, did not commence writing his volumes on the Synthetic Philosophy until the age of forty.

In addition to the previously-mentioned researches, by his numerous memoirs on Mesozoic land reptiles, to which he gave the name of Dinosaurs, and a hundred or more other pieces of work, Owen did inestimable service to palæontology.

Owen excelled Cuvier in the accuracy of his work and in the generalizing spirit which he brought to bear upon his problems. Erroneous in some of his theories; but where is the worker who has not made faults? As Liebig said, "The man who never made a fault never worked."

The working out of the structural contrasts between