[81] It is so interesting to most of us to know something of the early work of our greatest men, and of the tide in their affairs, which, taken at the flood, led on to fortune, that I hope I may be excused for referring to the period when the distinguished chief of the Natural History Department of the British Museum, the great comparative anatomist, the unrivalled palaeontologist, the illustrious physiologist, the venerable and venerated friend of all earnest students, was beginning to attract the attention, and to receive the approbation of his seniors as a promising young worker. In Messrs. Griffith and Pidgeon's Supplement to Cuvier's 'Mollusca and Radiata,' published in 1834, the treatise in question is thus mentioned: "We have much pleasure in referring to a most excellent memoir on _Nautilus pompilius_, by Mr. Owen, with elaborate figures of the animal, its shell, and various parts, published by direction of the Council of the College of Surgeons. The reader will find the most satisfactory information on the subject, and the scientific public will earnestly hope that the present volume will be the first of a similar series." This hope has been more than fulfilled. Dean Buckland, in his 'Bridgewater Treatise,' wrote of this work: "I rejoice in the present opportunity of bearing testimony to the value of Professor Owen's highly philosophical and most admirable memoir--a work not less creditable to the author than honourable to the Royal College of Surgeons, under whose auspices the publication has been so handsomely conducted." Mr. Owen's investigations confirmed his previous supposition that the Pearly Nautilus is inferior in its organisation to octopus, sepia, or any other known cephalopod; that it is not isolated, but that it recedes towards the gasteropods, to which belong the snail, the periwinkle, &c., and that in some of its characters its structure is analogously related to the still lower _annulosa_, or worms. Mr. Owen was just about to start for Paris with the intention of presenting a copy of his book to his celebrated contemporary and friend, and of showing him his dissections of the Nautilus which had been the subject of his research, when he heard of Baron Cuvier's death. It must have been to him a great sorrow and a grievous disappointment.