Owen.--Both before and after Darwin's hypothesis was given to science, notable anatomists, a few of whom must be mentioned, gave attention to fossil remains. Richard Owen (1804-1892) had his interest in fossil life stimulated by a visit to Cuvier in 1831, and for more than forty years thereafter he published studies on the structure of fossil animals. His studies on the fossil remains of Australia and New Zealand brought to light some interesting forms. The extinct giant bird of New Zealand (Fig. 98) was a spectacular demonstration of the enormous size to which birds had attained during the Eocene period. Owen's monograph (1879) on the oldest known bird--the archæopteryx--described an interesting form uniting both bird-like and reptilian characteristics. [Illustration: Fig. 98.--Professor Owen and the Extinct Fossil Bird (Dinornis) of New Zealand. Permission of D. Appleton & Co.] Agassiz.--Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) (Fig. 99) also came into close personal contact with Cuvier, and produced his first great work partly under the stimulus of the latter. When Agassiz visited Paris, Cuvier placed his collections at Agassiz's disposal, together with numerous drawings of fossil fishes. The profusely illustrated monograph of Agassiz on the fossil fishes (1833-1844) began to appear in 1833, the year after Cuvier's death, and was carried on eleven years before it was completed. [Illustration: Fig. 99.--Louis Agassiz, 1807-1873.] Agassiz, with his extensive knowledge of the developmental stages of animals, came to see a marked parallelism between the stages in development of the embryo and the successive forms in the geological series. This remarkable parallelism between the fossil forms of life and the stages in the development of higher forms of recent animals is very interesting and very significant, and helps materially in elucidating the idea that the fossil series represent roughly the successive stages through which animal forms have passed in their upward course of development from the simplest to the highest, through long ages of time. Curiously enough, however, Agassiz failed to grasp the meaning of the principle that he had worked out. After illustrating so nicely the process of organic evolution, he remained to the end of his life an opponent of that theory.