Address to the Biological Section of the British Association / by Richard Owen.

  • Owen, Richard, Sir, 1804-1892.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address to the Biological Section of the British Association / by Richard Owen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    grade of structure after settling down at South Kensington. In its anatomy we find, it is true, the central hall and long side-lit galleries; but in addition to these inherited structures we discern a series of one-storeyed galleries, manifesting a developmental advance in the better admission of light and a consequent adapta- tion of the walls as well as the floor to the needs of exhibition.^ Should the Section, as did the Acad(5mie des Sciences in relation to the passage cited, kindly condone such application to human contrivances of the current genealogical or phlyogenetic language applied to vital structures, your President need hardly own his appreciation of the vast tuperiority of every step in advance which is manifested in existing as compared with extinct organisms. And thus, sensible as far as the human faculty may comprehend them, that organic adapta- tions transcend the best of those conceived oy the ingenuity of man to fulfil his special needs, he would ask whether analogy does not legitimately lead to the inference, for organic phenomena, of an Adapting Cause operating in a correspond- ing transcendent degTee ? In conclusion, I am moved to remark that a Museum giving space and light for adequate display of the national treasures of Natural History may be expected to exert such influence on the progress of ]3iology as to condone, if not call for, a narrative of the circumstances attending its formation in the Records of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. ' In the notable reply {Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 1829) to an illustration of the unity of composition or of plan in Cephalopods and Vertebrates, by bending one of the latter so as to bring the pelvis in contact with the nape, advocated by Geoffrey St. Hilaire, Cuvier did not deem it too trivial to call in architecture to elucidate his objections. ' La compositiov d'une maisoii, c'est le nombre d'appartemens ou de chambres qui s'y trouve ; et son^^Zaw, c'est la disposition reciproque de ces ap- partemcns et de ces chambres. Si deux maisons contenaient chacune un vestibule, une anti-chambre, une chambre coucher, un salon et une salle k manger, on dirait que leur comjmition est la meme : et si cette chambre, ce salon, &c., 6taient au meme 6taoo arranges dans le meme manifere, on dirait aussi que leur plan est la meme. M ais si leur ordre 6tait different, si, de plain-pied dans une des maisons, ces pieces 6taient placoes dans I'autre aux Stages successifs, on dirait qu'avec une composition scmblable ces maisons sont construites sur des plans diJff6rens,' p. 245. LONDON : PttlNTED nT TOTTISWOODB Ann CO., KBW-STaKET SQUAEK AND PAttLIAMKNT 8THKET