But, assuming Owen to have really discovered the one, he was as far off as ever from the origin of the many. And on this subject he never did reach any definite conclusion. He admits, it is true, a theory which sounds very like evolution: ‘Thus, at the acquisition of facts adequate to test the moot question of links between past and present species, as at the close of that other series of researches proving the skeleton of all Vertebrates, and even of Man, to be the harmonized sum of a series of essentially similar segments, I have been led to recognize species as exemplifying the continuous operation of natural law, or secondary cause; and that, not only successively, but progressively; from the first embodiment of the Vertebrate idea under its old Ichthyic vestment until it became arrayed in the glorious garb of the human form[122].’ In this quotation he is in the main stating the views he held in 1849, for the latter portion of it is from his essay _On the Nature of Limbs_, published in that year. But the nature of the secondary cause which produced species cannot be concluded from his works. He fiercely contested Darwin’s theory of natural selection, both in conversation and in periodicals. To the last he clung to a notion of a ‘vital property,’ which is thus described in the _Anatomy_ (iii. 807): ‘So, being unable to accept the volitional hypothesis, or that of impulse from within, or the selective force exerted by outward circumstances, I deem an innate tendency to deviate from parental type, operating through periods of adequate duration, to be the most probable nature, or way of operation, of the secondary law, whereby species have been derived one from the other.’ In 1883 Owen resigned his office at the British Museum and retired into private life. His remaining years were passed at Sheen in a tranquil and apparently happy old age. In 1884 he was gazetted a K.C.B., and, on Mr Gladstone’s initiative, his pension was augmented by £100 a year. But, though it pleased him to be always pleading poverty, he was really a comparatively wealthy man, and when he died left £30,000 behind him. His wife died in 1873, and his only son in 1886; but a solitude which might have been painful was enlivened by the presence of his son’s widow and her seven children. Owen delighted in the country. He had a genuine love for outdoor natural history, and ‘the sight of the deer and other animals in the park, the birds and insects in the garden, the trees, flowers, and varying aspects of the sky, filled him with enthusiastic admiration.’ He died, literally of old age, on Sunday, 18 January, 1892.