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Richard Owen's Reaction to Transmutation in the 1830's

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Adrian Desmond
Adrian Desmond
Affiliation:
Department of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT.
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Extract

Following Michael Bartholomew's study of ‘Lyell and Evolution’ in 1973, scholars have become increasingly interested in the response of gentlemen geologists to Lamarckism during the reign of William IV (1830–7). Bartholomew contended that Charles Lyell was ‘alone in scenting the danger’ for man of using transmutation to explain fossil progression, and that he reacted to the threat of bestialisation by restructuring palaeontology along safe non-progressionist lines. Like his Anglican contemporaries, Lyell was concerned to prove that man was no transformed ape, and that morals were not the better part of brute instinct. Dov Ospovat has subsequently suggested that Lyell's theory of climate was equally an attempt to thwart the transformists and ‘preserve man's unique status in creation’. In other words, Lyell's biology and geology were inextricably related in Principles of Geology and his ideology affected his science as a whole. Finally, Pietro Corsi has identified the Continental materialists who most probably alerted Lyell to the danger, intimating that a conservative British response became imperative when Lyell ‘saw signs of the diffusion of transformism in England itself, where it could even form an unholy alliance with prevailing progressionist and directionalist interpretations of the history of life on earth’.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , March 1985 , pp. 25 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1985

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References

I should like to thank William F. Bynum and James A. Secord for discussions; and the following institutions and libraries for permission to study manuscript material: The British Library, British Museum archives, British Museum (Natural History), Edinburgh University, Geological Society of London, Royal College of Surgeons of England, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand, University College London, and the Zoological Society of London.

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15 Owen, , op. cit. (12)Google Scholar, entry for Wednesday 17 August 1831.

16 Ibid., entry for Saturday 20 August 1831.

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24 Sir Richard Owen Scientific Notes, c. 1828–1832, British Library Add. MS. 34, 406, f. 38—hereafter cited as BL.

25 For example the anonymous ‘Of the continuity of the animal kingdom by means of generation, from the first ages of the world to the present times’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, 1829, 7, 152–5.Google Scholar

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34 On the use of this technique see Shapin, Steven and Thackray, Arnold, ‘Prosopography as a research tool in history of science: the British scientific community 1700–1900’, History of Science, 1974, 12, 1–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed The ‘core group’ comprises officers and committee of the Zoological Club, most frequent contributors to the Zoological Journal, and scientifically-active members of the Zoological Society. As a bare minimum this would include: T. Bell (1792–1880), E. T. Bennett (1797–1836), J. E. Bicheno (1785–1851), J. Brookes (1761–1833), J. G. Children (1777–1852), J. E. Gray (1800–1875), T. Horsfield (1773–1859), W. Kirby (1759–1850), W. S. MacLeay (1792–1865), J. Sabine (1770–1837), J. F. Stephens (1792–1852), G. B. Sowerby (1788–1854), J. de C. Sowerby (1787–1871), N. A. Vigors (1785–1840), and W. Yarrell (1784–1856).

35 Children was Keeper of the Natural History Collections at the British Museum, and Gray was his assistant; MacLeay was attaché to the embassy in Paris; Sabine was Inspector-General of Taxes; and Stephens worked in the Admiralty Office. For a recent study of zoologists holding public office see Gunther, A. E., The founders of science at the British Museum 1753–1900, Halesworth, 1980, chs. V–VII.Google Scholar

36 These goals were spelt out in the ‘Introduction’ to the Zoological Journal, 1824, 1, pp. iii–viiGoogle Scholar, and in the yearly addresses; see also Herbert, Sandra, ‘The place of man in the development of Darwin's theory of transmutation. Part II’, Journal of the History of Biology, 1977, 10, 155–227 (170–6).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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41 Zoological Journal, 1825, 2, 424–5.Google Scholar

42 Herbert, , op. cit. (36), 159–64Google Scholar; Rudwick, , op. cit. (1), 203–4.Google Scholar

43 When Grant was asked to investigate student claims of G. S. Pattison's incompetence in 1831, Pattison snapped back that a man devoted ‘to the idle and unprofitable speculations’ of German anatomists and who ‘spent nearly the whole session in an attempt to prove an absurdity, viz. that all the bones of the skull are vertebrae’ was in no position to judge! The Lancet, 1831–1832, 1, 86.Google Scholar

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45 Bellot, H. Hale, University College London 1826–1926, London, 1929, ch. IIGoogle Scholar; Morrell's statement that the professors received small salaries plus student fees was only true up to 1831, when the ‘guarantee money’ was withdrawn, leaving professors like Grant barely able to maintain a respectable lifestyle. Morrell, J. B., ‘Individualism and the structure of British science in 1830’, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 1971, 3, 183–204 (198).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Brookes was a successful teacher; he published in the Zoological Journal and was President of the Zoological Club in 1828. Large portions of his museum, which he began disposing of in 1826, ended up in Grant's departmental museum: on which see Brookes, J. to Birkbeck, G., 11 03 1826Google Scholar, College Correspondence MS. 1826: 53, University College London—hereafter cited as UCL. Others in the London community, notably Vigors and Gray, donated specimens to the university museum.

47 His recommendations came from Brewster, Jameson, Barclay, and Fleming. On the ‘anti-Edinburgh spirit’ of the London quinarians see Fleming, J., The Lithology of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 1859, p. 73.Google Scholar

48 David Pollock to unknown correspondent, 26 July 1831, Royal College of Surgeons MS. Cab. VIII (1)a75; see also Owen, 's Life, op. cit. (10), i, 42–3.Google Scholar

49 D.N.B. Justice Broderip was a frequent visitor to the Owen household. He contributed to the Zoological Journal and was a founding member of the Zoological Society.

50 Owen, , op. cit. (10), i, 86.Google Scholar Carlisle was referring to attacks on his Hunterian Oration, which Wakley had mocked in The Lancet, 1826, 9, 689–93.Google Scholar

51 ‘Address’, The Lancet, 1830–1831, 1, 1–5 (4).Google Scholar

52 See The Lancet 1823–33 passim for the constant mud-slinging. Wakley often took stock in the addresses prefixed to the journal: see esp. The Lancet, 1828–1829, 1, 1–7Google Scholar; 1829–30, 1, 1–5. In 1835 Wakley entered the House of Commons as Radical M. P. for Finsbury; though a ‘representative of labour’ and in favour of the ballot (he was one of those present at the drawing up of the Charter) he was not a Chartist himself, but believed that changes should be brought about by parliamentary means: Sprigge, S. Squire, The life and times of Thomas Wakley, London, 1899, 253–61, 312–5.Google ScholarBrook, Charles, Battling surgeon, Glasgow, 1945Google Scholar, deals extensively with Wakley's radicalism.

53 The Lancet, 1835–1836, 1, 586.Google Scholar

54 The Lancet, 1833–1834, 1, 279.Google Scholar For Grant's own democratic, socially-levelling attack on the nepotistic, elitist Council of the College of Surgeons, during which he slated Owen's Hunterian Museum as an ‘impediment’ to the progress of liberal opinion, see Grant, R. E., On the present state of the medical profession in England, London, 1841, esp. pp. 50–1.Google Scholar

55 The object and aims of the London Medical Gazette were spelt out in its first number: 1828, 1, 1–3. The Gazette similarly denounced the Professor of Midwifery, D. D. Davis, for shamelessly inviting Wakley to a London University soirée (where, to the Gazette's unutterable disgust, he was warmly received), and for supporting Wakley's call for a non-monopolistic College of Medicine to rival the College of Physicians and College of Surgeons: London Medical Gazette, 1830–1831, 7, 372–3, 792–3Google Scholar; 1831, 8, 21–3, 218.

56 London Medical Gazette, 1833–1834, 13, 292–3Google Scholar; and Grant's response in The Lancet, 1833–1834, 1, 644–5.Google Scholar

57 London Medical Gazette, 1834, 13, 675–7Google Scholar; the Gazette acknowledged Grant's scientific abilities on more than one occasion: reviewing the first part of his Outlines of comparative anatomy (issued in 1835), it thought he was ‘perhaps the most competent person in England to write a manual on the subject’; London Medical Gazette, 1834–1835, 15, 809.Google Scholar

58 Godlee, R. J., ‘Thomas Wharton Jones’, British Journal of Ophthalmology, 1921, 93, 145–181CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on Wakley, 's ‘blasphemy’, The Lancet, 1824, 1, 305Google Scholar, and 1826, 9, 692–3. University College was early nicknamed the ‘Godless College’, see for example Forbes, E. to Owen, R., 2 11 1846Google Scholar, BM(NH) MS., Owen Corres, vol 12, f. 308.

59 Owen, R., ‘Report on British fossil reptiles, Part II’, Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Plymouth, 1841, 60–204 (197).Google Scholar

60 Desmond, , op. cit. (17)Google Scholar; see, for example, Grant's comments in The Lancet, 1833–1834, 1, 198.Google Scholar

61 R. Owen, Hunterian lectures, 1837, in ‘Manuscript Notes, and Synopses of Lectures’, BM(NH) MS., OC. 38. f. 81. On Owen's theology see Desmond, , op. cit. (7), ch. 2Google Scholar, and Brooke, J. H., ‘The natural theology of the geologists: some theological strata’, in Jordanova, L. J. and Porter, R. S. (eds.) Images of the earth: essays in the history of the environmental sciences, Chalfont St. Giles, 1979, pp. 39–64.Google Scholar

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63 Owen, R., MS. Notebook 7 (01–05 1832), f. 64Google Scholar, BM(NH).

64 Grant earned only £117 p.a. on average from student fees throughout the 1830s (calculated from Professors' Fees Books MSS., UCL) after the withdrawal of his ‘guarantee money’ in 1831. Owen fared rather better; his salary was raised from £150 p.a. plus £50 remuneration (Royal College of Surgeons MS. 275 [18]h7) to £300 in 1833. But he still considered this inadequate to marry Caroline Clift (they had been engaged since 1827), and they only married in 1835 after Owen had been provided with premises above the Hunterian Museum.

65 Desmond, , op. cit. (17).Google Scholar

66 Zoological Society Minutes of Council MS., vols 2 and 3, passim.

67 The Lancet, 1836–1837, 1, 766Google Scholar; for the President's defence of this action, see the Statement by the President and certain members of the Council of the Zoological Society, in reply to observations and charges made by Colonel Sykes and others, at the General Meeting of the Society, on the 29th of April last, and at the monthly meeting on the 2nd of the same month, London, 1835. The rumpus was reported in The Times, 29 05 1835, p. 1.Google Scholar

68 It did not help that a box of fossils from Tasmania destined for Grant in 1841 somehow became relabelled and ended up with Owen at Lincoln's Inn. Despite protestations from Owen, Grant satisfactorily proved that a switch had occurred, see his letters to C. C. Atkinson on this throughout April and May 1841, UCL College Correspondence. As others have noted, angry exchanges took place between Grant and Owen at the Geological Society at this time over the interpretation of Koch's mastodon: Gerstner, Patsy A., ‘Vertebrate paleontology: an early nineteenth-century transatlantic science’, Journal of the History of Biology, 1970, 3, 137–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar (140–1); Curwen, E. Cecil (ed.), The journal of Gideon Mantell, London, 1940, p. 159.Google Scholar

69 John Marshall mentioned the ‘Paper War’ in a letter to Owen, 7 April 1833, BM(NH) Ms., Owen Corres, vol. 19, f. 11.

70 Pentland, J. to Clift, W., 10 05 1833Google Scholar, BM(NH) MS., Owen Corres, vol. 21, f. 219.

71 R. Owen, Hunterian Lectures 1837, Royal College of Surgeons MS. 42.d.4, f. 96.

72 Home, E., ‘On the ova of the different tribes of opossum and Ornithorhynchus’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1819, 234–40 (234).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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74 See Grant's letter quoted in ‘On the egg of Ornithorhynchus’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, 1830, 8, 149–51.Google Scholar Cf. Geoffrey's retention of the fifth class in ‘Considérations sur des oeufs d'Ornithorinque, formant de nouveaux documens pour la question de la classification des Monotrèmes’, Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 1829, 18, 157–64.Google Scholar

75 Compare Grant's letter reproduced in Geoffroy, ‘Considérations’, ibid., with his more cautious statement ‘On the egg of Ornithorhynchus’ in the note above.

76 Maule's letter was read on 11 Sept., 1832: Proceedings of the Committee of Science and Correspondence of the Zoological Society, 1832, Pt. 2, 145–6Google Scholar; Owen dismissed Maule's evidence in the appendix to his ‘On the mammary glands of the Ornithorhynchus paradoxus’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1832, 517–38 (533–4).Google Scholar

77 These were (1) lack of detectible shell-secreting membranes, (2) lack of sufficient yolk to enable the embryo to survive in the egg, (3), the narrowness of the pelvis, preventing a large egg from being laid, and (4) the presence of mammary glands, suggesting that milk substituted for the yolk: Owen, , On the ova of the Ornithorhynchus paradoxus'. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 1834, 555–66 (563–4).Google Scholar

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80 Owen, , op. cit. (76), 530–1.Google Scholar

81 Owen, R. [‘preparation of the mammary gland of Echidna Hystrix, Cuv.’], Proceedings of the Committee of Science and Correspondence of the Zoological Society, 1832, Pt. 2, 179–81Google Scholar; Owen, , op. cit. (76), 517Google Scholar; op. cit. (77), 555.

82 Bennett's letters beginning February 1833 from Sydney, as well as a list of his specimens with comments by Owen, are located in Royal College of Surgeons MS. Cab. VIII (1) b.L. See also the various letters from Bennett to Owen at BM(NH) MS., Owen Corres, vol. 3, ff. 252–371, vol. 4, ff. 1–54. The College of Surgeons awarded Bennett an honorary Gold Medal in recognition of the value of his shipments.

83 Grant's letter to Geoffroy, , op. cit. (74)Google Scholar; Proceedings of the Zoological Society 1833, Pt. 1, 15–6Google Scholar; Geoffroy, to Clift, W., 9 05 1833Google Scholar, BM(NH) MS., Owen Corres, vol. 23, f. 42.

84 Proceedings of the Zoological Society, 1833, Pt. 1, 15–6, 29, 91–2.Google Scholar Perhaps this explains why those with interests similar to Geoffrey's failed to back him; e.g. Grant in 1834 considered the platypus a mammal, while Blainville (whose animal chain might have benefitted from an intermediate class) came out on Owen's side.

85 Lamarck, , op. cit. (73), i, 249–57Google Scholar; but remember that Lamarck's book was reissued in 1830.

86 de Saint-Vincent, Jean Baptiste Bory, ‘Orang’, Dictionnaire Classique d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, 1827, xii. 261–285 (264–7)Google Scholar. Corsi, , op. cit, (5), 228–9Google Scholar, discusses Bory.

87 Saint-Hilaire, Geoffroy, ‘Tableau des Quadrumanes’, Annales du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, 1812, 19, 85–122 (87–9).Google Scholar

88 Bory, , op. cit. (86), 268Google Scholar; Latreille, P.-A., Familles naturelles du règne animal, Paris, 1825, pp. 43–4.Google Scholar Lyell was aware of the problem. In reference to Lamarck's theory, he discussed Camper's facial angle and its gradation from dog to man. But Lyell simply dismissed any parallel ‘graduated scale of intelligence’ as ‘visionary speculation’, particularly since ape intelligence had been exaggerated ‘at the expense of the dog’. Lyell, C., Principles of geology, London, 1832, ii, 60–1.Google Scholar

89 Owen, R., ‘On the osteology of the Chimpanzee and Orang Utan’, Transactions of the Zoological Society, 1835, 1, 343–79 (343).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

90 Owen, MS. notebook 11 (1834–6), f.87, BM(NH).

91 Owen, , op. cit. (89), 343–4, 354–5, 370–2.Google Scholar Later, he actually likened the change to a ‘metamorphosis’. Owen, , ‘Osteological contributions to the natural history of the Chimpanzee (Troglodytes, Geoffroy), including the descripion of the skull of a large species (Troglodytes Gorilla, Savage) discovered by Thomas S. Savage, M.D., in the Gaboon country, West Africa’, Transactions of the Zoological Society, 1849, 3, 381–422 (415).Google Scholar

92 Saint-Hilaire, Geoffroy, ‘Considérations sur les singes les plus voisins de l'homme’, Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, 1836, 2, 92–5 (94)Google Scholar; and Geoffroy, , ‘Études sur l'Orang-Outang de la Ménagerie’Google Scholar, ibid., 1–8 (7). Incidentally, mention of ‘human dignity’ occurs frequently in Geoffrey's papers on apes, and his attempt to allay fears shows that the problem was not confined to the British alone.

93 Morrell, and Thackray, , op. cit. (1), 302Google Scholar, also ch. I, and 245–56; on Owen's identification with the Association elite and ensuing patronage, pp. 217, 346, 492, 500. He acknowledged this aid in ‘Report on British fossil reptiles’, Report of the British Association f or the Advancement of Science, Birmingham, 1839, 43–126 (43)Google Scholar. On the Cambridge network see Cannon, S. F., op. cit. (2), 29–71.Google Scholar

94 Report BAAS, Newcastle, 1838, xxviiiGoogle Scholar; ibid., Plymouth, , 1841, xxiiGoogle Scholar; the records show that the Geological Committee received £118 2s 9d in 1839 to further the Report: ibid., Birmingham, 1839, xv.

95 Traill, T. S., ‘Address’, Report BAAS, Liverpool, 1837, xxv–xlii (xlii)Google Scholar; see also MacLeod, Roy and Collins, Peter (eds.), The parliament of science: the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Northwood, 1981.Google Scholar

96 Egerton, P. to Owen, , 26 10 1840Google Scholar, BM(NH) MS., Owen Corres, vol. 11, f. 17. Of course, the national context and Britain's prestige were brought very much to the fore by the 1830s Declinist debate. That imperial geologist Roderick Murchison did extract a certain nationalistic capital from Owen's Report, see note 106 below. Murchison's imperialism is treated by Secord, James A., ‘King of Siluria: Roderick Murchison and the imperial theme in nineteenth-century British geology’, Victorian Studies, 1982, 25, 413–42.Google Scholar

97 Owen, MS. notebook 11 (1834–6), f. 1, BM(NH).

98 Saint-Hilaire, Geoffroy, ‘Divers mémoires sur de grands sauriens … Téléosaurus et Sténéo-saurus’, Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, 1833, 12, 1–138Google Scholar; he praised Lamarck's laws in ‘Recherches sur l'organisation des gavials’, Mémoires du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, 1825, 12, 97–155 (150–1).Google Scholar

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101 Owen, , op. cit. (59), 197Google Scholar; and Grant, in The Lancet, 1833–1834, 2, 1001.Google Scholar

102 The collection was bought for £1250 and lodged in the basement of the British Museum in November 1834; on 12 February 1835 Charles König reported that it had been unpacked: British Museum MS. ‘Officers Reports’, 1834, vol. 16, f. 3737; 1835, vol. 17, f. 3819. Owen mentioned the collections that he had visited in op. cit. (93), p. 44.

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107 Report BAAS, Plymouth, 1841, xxiiGoogle Scholar; Rev Owen, R., op. cit. (10), i, 185.Google Scholar Owen mentioned the audience being urged by the Chairman to rise to its feet to show its appreciation in a letter to Caroline Owen, n.d., BL Add, MS. 39955, f. 244b.

108 Cf. Gillespie, Neal C., Charles Darwin and the problem of creation, Chicago, 1979, p. 31.Google Scholar

109 Ospovat, , Development of Darwin's theory, op. cit. (7), 130–2.Google Scholar Here Ospovat clearly elucidates the relationship that Owen conceived between embryology and unity of composition. He was evidently inspired by Barry, Martin, ‘On the unity of structure in the animal kingdom’, Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, 1836–1837, 22, 116–41, 245–64.Google Scholar That other incipient von Baerian, W. B. Carpenter, was certainly influenced by this article. See Carpenter, W. B., ‘On unity of function in organized beings’Google Scholar, ibid., 1837, 23, 92–114.

110 Geoffroy, , op. cit. (14), passim.Google ScholarGrant, R. E., ‘On the organs of support of the cephalopodous mollusca’, The Lancet, 1833–1834, 1, 505–14Google Scholar; ‘On the development of the skeleton of the vertebrated classes, and on the osteology of fishes’, ibid., 537–46.

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112 London Medical Gazette, 1833–1834, 13, 927.Google Scholar

113 Buckland, W. to Owen, R., 4 01 1839Google Scholar, Royal College of Surgeons MS. (1)a/19. de Blainville, H., ‘Doutes sur le prétendu didelphe fossile de Stonefield’, Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, 1838, 7, 402–18.Google ScholarGrant, R. E., General view of the characters and the distribution of extinct animals, London. 1839, pp. 7, 42–4, 54.Google Scholar On the politics of Blainville's position see Appel, , op. cit. (18)Google Scholar, and on his animal series Lessertisseur, J. and Jouffroy, F. K., ‘L'idée de série chez Blainville’, Revue d'Histoire des Sciences, 1979, 22, 25–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I have discussed the Stonesfield ‘Opossum’ in two papers: ‘Robert E. Grant's later views on organic development: the Swiney lectures on “Palaeontology”, 1853–1857’, Archives of Natural History, 1984, 11, 395–413Google Scholar; and ‘Interpreting the origin of mammals: new approaches to the history of palaeontology’, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 1984, 82, 7–16.Google Scholar

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115 R. Owen, Hunterian Lectures 3 and 4, May 6 and 9, 1837, Royal College of Surgeons MS 42.d.4, ff. 95–8. See also Lectures 1 and 2, May 2 and 4, 1837, BM(NH) MS. ff. 66–7.

116 Ospovat, , Development of Darwin's theory, op. cit. (7), 130–2Google Scholar; Owen, , Lectures on the comparative anatomy and physiology of the invertebrate animals, London, 1843, pp. 367–71.Google Scholar

117 Owen, , Hunterian Lectures 3 and 4, op. cit. (115), ff. 97–8.Google Scholar

118 Ibid.

119 See sources cited in op. cit. (7).

120 Carpenter himself realised this: Carpenter, W. B., Nature and man: essays scientific and philosophical, London, 1888, p. 107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a discussion see Desmond, , op. cit. (7), passim.Google Scholar

121 A valuable discussion and useful bibliography is provided by Shapin, Steven, ‘History of science and its sociological reconstructions’, History of Science, 1982, 20, 157–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

122 As Owen reported to Caroline Owen, 27 December [1841], BL Add. MS. 45927, f. 38.

123 Owen, to Buckland, W., 11 01 1842Google Scholar, BL Add. MS. 40499, f. 252.

124 Buckland, W. to SirPeel, Robert, 12 01 1842Google Scholar, BL Add. MS. 40499, f. 250.

125 SirPeel, Robert to Owen, , 1 11 1842Google Scholar, BL Add. MS. 40518, f. 24; Owen, to Peel, , 1 11 1842Google Scholar, BL Add. MS. 40518, f. 26; see also Whewell, W. to Owen, , 9 11 1842Google Scholar, BM (NH) MS., Owen Corres, vol. 26, f. 283. Roy MacLeod has discussed pensions in ‘Science and the Civil List 1824–1914’, Technology & Society, 1970, 6, 47–55Google Scholar; and I have mentioned Grant's failure to obtain a pension from the government even in 1854 in op. cit. (113).

126 Owen, to Buckland, , 26 12 [1844]Google Scholar, BL Add. MS. 40556, f. 294; Buckland, to Peel, , 27 12 1844Google Scholar, BL Add. MS. 40556, f. 292.

127 For example, he moved to obtain an F.R.S. for W. Brodie before the latter returned to New Zealand, telling Buckland that it ‘may add to the great determination which he manifests to collect and transmit specimens & information from that colony’. Since Brodie had already armed Owen with a seventh Dinornis species, Owen was well aware of the advantages that could accrue from such an award: Owen, to Buckland, , 17 01 1845Google Scholar, BL Add. MS. 38091, f. 207; and 13 November 1844, BL Add. MS. 38091, f. 205.