The Sun.
London, England, 1858-10-11 00:00:00

PROFESSOR OWEN AT KENDAL.

On Tuesday evening last Professor Owen delivered
a lecture on the Classification of Mammalia, at the
Kendal Literary and Scientific Institution—Profes-
sor Sedgwick in the chair; and on Wednesday he
was entertained at a public breakfast in the As-
sembly. Rooms—the Mayor (J. J. Wilson, Esq.) in
the chair.

After breakfast an address was presented to Pro-
fessor Owen, on the motion of Professor Sedgwick,
seconded by Sir J. Richardson. The address was
carried by acclamation.
Professor OwEN, on rising, was received with
loud applause. ,He said that it was impossible for
him adequately to express his sense of what was
due to the previous speakers for the very .flattering
terms in which they had been pleased to introduce
him to their notice, or to the commany for the man-
ner in which they had received him. In presenting
himself under such circumstances to many who had
never before seen him, he rose with a positive sense
of shame, for they would be very apt to regard
him in that very suspicious light of a " faultless
monster whom the world ne'er saw," and whom,
indeed, he, for his own part, did not wish any
more than he expected to see. (Loud applause.)
They had, indeed, placed him in the most dan-
gerous position in which a fellow Christian could
be placed. It was hardly fair to employ towards
one fallible man such honeyed, such flattering
words as those which had been applied to him.
They might, indeed, depend upon it that they were
really, wholly, and expressly unmerited on his part.
What had been the product of a great many days'
labour had been summed up all at Once, and thus
appeared in a form magnified beyond all due pro-
portion. The opportunities that had enabled him
to do what he had accomplished were just those
opportunities which, if properly availed of on the
part of others, would enable them to produce fruit
of the same kind. (Loud applause.) In our
matter-of-fact country it was an extremely rare
case where we looked nature directly in the
face and studied her works, except they hap-
pened to form a part of our daily duty. It
had been his good fortune to be placed in a
situation where he was thus called on to the pur-
suit, and the return had been to him full and over-
flowing. (Loud applause.) He declared that he
felt an exalted sense of gratitude to his fellow-
creatures for the necessity that had been forced
upon him, and he could only again say that the re-
turn he had in every way received was far beyond
anything that he desired. But he was extremely
glad, on other grounds, to meet them on that occa-
sion. He rejoiced to see such a spontaneous and
public manifestation of the worth in which scien-
tific labour was held in this country, and he re-
garded it as an encouraging sign of the times. It
was hardly 30 years ago since the search for ab-
stract truth, unless applied to profitable purposes,
held that estimation in the Minds of Englishmen
generally, and certainly not in the minds of some
of those gifted and able governors in high places,
to which it was entitled. They did. not conceive
of science as a pursuit that ought to be looked to
and encouraged, and, in a certain degree, rewarded.
A change of feeling had, however, taken place in
this respect, and. this, he thought, was owing in no
small degree to the organisation of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science. (Loud
cheers.) That society, he rejoiced to say, had
stood its ground. It had done its work ; it had
struck its roots pretty deeply into the ground,
during its labours over a period of 28 years. Since
the year 1831, when a small band of good and de-
termined workers first organised themselves toge-
ther, they had gone on from year to year summing
up the results of their researches in the various de-
partments of science, and placing them freely and
clearly and plainly before the world, pointing out
other good and important lines of investigation,
and, from time to time, with the free speech of
Englishmen, pressing upon Government the im-
portance of those scientific enterprises which a
Government only could promote ; and to this source
of labour he had no hesitation in saying that they
must attribute the greatly-improved and the healthy
feeling which was now felt in the British nation
towards those who devoted themselves to the
promotion of pure and abstract truth. (Loud
applause.) But the result of abstract speculation
had been most unexpectedly displayed in the increase
of our daily comforts, and in the establishment of
our mastery over the powers of nature. It was from
the researches of Priestley and of Cavendish into
the nature of the air and of the atmosphere that

discoveries had been made which had led, in pro-
cess of time, to the almost general application of
gas. This might be cited as one of the sudden and
unexpected results of study which appeared to pro-
mise nothing of the kind. It appeared from the
testimony of an old metropolitan magistrate, that
in one year after the illumination by gas had been
introduced, that simple increase of power had di-
minished crime to the extent of one-third, and thus

it was that the result of our purely scientific disco-
veries came gratifyingly in aid. of the labours of
our Mends and fellow-labourers, the ministers of
the gospel. (Cheers.) And so again let them pic-
ture to themselves Oersted working in his little la-
boratory, and succeeding, after many trials, in in-
sulating his apparatus, and seeing his little mag-
netic needle turn, when he discovered that mode of

force which we call magnetism. Could he have me-
ditated the result ? We might be tempted to ask of
what use is this likely to be, will it clothe us better,
will it in any way advance our comfort, and yet out
of this simple element came the electric telegraph.
(Cheers.) And then againthere was Black, a quiet,
modest, hard-working man, who had his attention
directed to the nature of heat. He discovered in the
course of his investigations the law by which water
takes in immense quantities of heat in the form of
steam, and parts with it again when condensed into
water. Watt, a young, hard-headed, persevering
Scotchman, of a mechanical turn of mind, caught
hold of the idea, and followed it up, brought out the
condensing steam engine, so that Black may be de-
cribed as the discoverer, and Watt the inventor of
it, and thus it was that abstract science had given the
civilised world that power which they possessed over
nature. Nor was there any line of inquiry meted
out to them in this particular. In that little
byepath in which he had been employed, and
which had added some new and curious forms to
natural history, there might not appear to be any
directly beneficial result; but some incidental advan-
tage had risen, of which he felt proud. In the year
1858, Mr. Brown, of Stanway, near Colchester, a
most worthy and industrious investigator of the
geology of its district, brought him a fossil, and
that of the most unpromising kind he had ever had
in his hand. He (the Professor) was then a young
man. It bad been submitted to two or three other

persons before it was brought to him, and they had
not been able to make anything of it. After
thoroughly examining it, he made a transverse and
a longitudinal cut of it, and he found that it was a
petrified tooth, a tooth of a species of animal which
had been described and characterised by him. It
was most like that of a spermaceti whale, but it
did not wholly correspond with it ; he therefore
simply ranked it as the tooth of a whale, and gave
it back to his friend with a name accordingly. Pro-
fessor Henslow, in the year 1838, called upon him
and left him a bag of fossils, which had been picked
up upon the same part of the South Eastern coast,
and among them he recognised several evidences of
two or three kinds of the whale that had these teeth.
He told him the specimens were by no means
rare ones, that they abounded in the Red Crag for-
mation, as it is called, along the coast. On analys-
ing these fossils, they were found to contain equal
portions of phosphate of lime in the bone and in
the tooth. Liebig had about this time called atten-
tion to the fact that phosphate of bone is unfit for
the soil, but with the addition of sulphuric acid
phosphate of lime is converted into superphosphate,
and from an insoluble salt is converted into a
soluble one, forming excellent manure for turnips
and mangoldWurtzel. Professor Henslow forthwith
called together the men of Ipswich, gave them a
lecture, in which he explained that these remains
contained the same portion of phosphate as
organised bones. A hard-headed man, who was
one of his hearers, immediately got a few bushels,
and carried them to an agricultural chemist in the
neighbourhood, to ascertain how much super-
phosphate could be got out of them, and it turned
out on investigation that they contained just the
same quantity as good bones from South America.
These fossils had been considered from 1832 to 1848
to belong to the coprilites, and obtained the famli-
liar name of cops. Our friend, accordingly took out
a. patent for making manure from cops, and was mak-
ing at the rate of £6,000 a year by his manufac-
ture. The next thing he heard of the matter was
when a boy put a paper into his hand, which, on
examination, informed him he would be wanted at

Guildhall o;.iwhere-he must attend
under certain dreadful penalties. It was, in fact,
a subpoena ; and it turned out that a gentleman in
Suffolk had discovered a deposit of these remains
in his own ground, and the patentee had brought
an action to try his right to turn them to account
in the same way as he had done. This red crag
stone extended inland 30 miles, at various depths,
which may be taken on the average at seven or
eight feet ; and the farming men, when not parti-
cularly employed on other works, had been set to
dig cop pits, for the purpose of getting these cops.
They were then burnt, and sold at so much per ton,
and the profit thus realised turned out to be equal
to the profit of the best labour these men could be
turned to. (Great applause.) This had been going
on since the year 1843. These things came under
the category of bone or teeth, and it was urged
there was no ground for founding a patent or any
privileges upon their use. - The verdict of the
jury properly was, that neither party was right

or wrong, and that they might be at liberty
to fight the battle over again (great laughter,
and applause)—and he believed that now every man
was left at liberty to dig up his own cops. (Cheers.)
For himself he must say that he never felt happier
than when he found this evidence of the good re-
sults of his researches. He must not :it down with-
out offering a word of advice or of suggestion to
mothers that might be there present. He did not
believe great scientific attainments were the result
of peculiar or special gifts. They arose from doing
steadily and quietly, and without thought or care
for the result, the duties that come before us in daily
life. (Applause) He had had the good fortune to
be drifted from a tempting field of practice, where
everything seemed to offer him the fairest prospect
of professional success. He was led to see that he
must choose between Dame Science and the active
duty of his profession, and he selected the former,
and he had never once had reason to regret the de-
termination to which he had come. (Cheers.) The
industry of one man had amassed one of the largest
collections of the last century, and the labour which
he (the speaker) had hadin arranging it was nothing
to the anatomical and physical labour of that mo-
dest and retiring man, John Hunter. (Cheers.) He
had a large metropolitan practice, and was one of
the surgeons of a large London hospital, and yethe
found time—we might allfindtime for useful studies
if we would—he found time to devote himself to
original researches, and he left behind him a col-
lection to the purchase of which Parliament devoted
£15,000, together with an equal sum to enable the
College of Surgeons to build a receptacle worthy to
hold it. Owing to various circumstances, this mag-
nificent collection continued till 1857 without any
catalogue, beyond a mere fasciculus of notes. In
that year he (Prof. Owen) had the happiness to be
associated with Mr. Cliffe, his only pupil, in making
a catalogue ; and it was the pursuit of his daily
duty in this matter that had given him the oppor-
tunity to do what he had been enabled to accom-
plish for this branch of science. (Applause.) Among
the papers which Mr. Hunter and left, and which
had been preserved with the most religious care by
Mr. Cliffe, was one which contained a sentiment
with which he had been greatly struck. He was
in the habit of noting down his thoughts from time
to time, and the sentiment to which he referred was
to this effect, that no man was ever a great man
who wanted to be one. (Great cheering.) In order
that we may achieve any species of greatness, we
must be utterly unconscious of the way in which we
arrive at it. Everything that we do we must do
either from a sense of duty or from the pleasure of
it. And we must never trouble ourselves about the
consequences—we must never say, I will be at the
head. (Loud cheers.) When the Duke of Wel-
lington carried out any of his great strategical
operations, he did not think at the time of an earl-
dom or a dukedom ; he had no thought but how to
give France a sound drubbing. (Loud laughter,
and cheers.) But notwithstanding all he had said,
they must not think he was insensible to the pecu-
liarly kind manner in which they had been pleased
to express their sense of his labours, and it would
be the more ungrateful in him if he were so, when
he called to mind his past career, and remembered
how it was his greatest pleasure, during the best
part of his life, when his professional labours were
over, to go and attend the meetings of the different
societies for the advancement of knowledge, espe-
cially those of the Geological Society. He need
not tell them that on those occasions he listened to
the admirable discourses of some of the first men of
the day, all of them animated by the best spirit,
the spirit that ought to animate such assemblies,
and among them to none with greater profit and in-
struction than to the words which fell from the elo-
quent lips of their goold old friend, the president of
that society. He must also bear his tribute to the truly
Christian and British character of Sir John
Richardson, who had set an example for all who
came after him. From the hasty glance he had
cast over their museum, it appeared to him that it
contained the means for conveying a most admirable
elementary knowledge of the leading types and
forms of extinct anithals. The young student with
a very small amount of elementary knowledge,
would, if he availed himself of the advantages
which it offered, be able to lay a most admirable
substratum for further research. He felt it was
a great honour and credit to be called on to address
an audience such as was assembled the previous
night, and he could only, in return for their kind-
ness, express his best wishes for the success of their
institution, and for the prosperity of Kendal
generally. (The learned professor resumed his seat
amid general and continued applause.)

BORNEO AND SIR 'TAMES BROOKE-
MEETING OF THE CHAMBER OF
COMMERCE AT BIRMINGHAJIL

A special meeting of the Chamber of Commerce-
at Birmingham was held on Friday afternoon, for
the purpose of considering the propriety of me-
morialising, Government on the subject of Rajah
Brooke's proposal for obtaining protection for
Sarawak. Mr. G. DOWNING, one of the vice-
presidents, took the chair.
The CHAIRMAN, in the course of a few introduc-
tory remarks, said that he knew but little of Sir
James Brooke or his doings, beyond being aware
that he was an adventurous English gentleman,
who took up his residence on an Island until
then unknown to commerce, became its rajah.
and was recognised and sustained in this
position by the English Government. It
being now a question whether the protection
affordedto the settlement was to be continued, it was
for that Chamber to decide whether the matter was
one with which they should interfere. Without
having thought much about it, his own impression
was that it was more a matter for the politician
and the statesman. That meeting, however, had
been called for the purpose of having the subject
ventilated, and it was possible that it might be
shown to have an important bearing on the com-
mercial interests of this country, as well as the
interests of civilisation. Prima facie, every newly-
developed country must have wants, and England
was the nation most able to supply those wants,
whatever they might be.
Mr. S. S. LLOYD moved the adoption of a memo-
rial similar to that which the merchants of the City
of London had adopted in relation to this matter.
The motion having been seconded,
Mr. PHILIP MUNTZ said he did not profess to
know much of the virtues and talents of Sir James
Brooke; but, as far as the newspapers told him the
facts, the real question was this—that if any gen-
tleman of private fortune thought proper to fit out
a vessel, go round the world, and take possession
of an island by hook or by crook, he might do so.
It was true the Sultan of Borneo was said to have
granted this island, but it was just as Oude was
granted to us, Texas to the United States, and so
on wherever the weak sought the protection of the
strong. Having got possession of Sarawak, and
holding it, the question now raised was whether,
if it was beneficial to our trade—which he (Mr.
Muntz) dissented from—England ought not to
give it protection, appoint a governor, send out
soldiers, ships, a bishop, and all the other machi-
nery of a regular English colony: He altogether
disapproved of this. The principle of grabbing
what a man could get might be very fashionable
in such matters, but it was not very safe. Every
attempt to acquire territory by fraud was danger-
ous. The narrow escape our Indian empire had
just had was traceable to our annexation of Oude,
to which we had no more right than we have to
Borneo. (Hear, hear.) 'Suppose that some native
or Borneo were to fit out a vessel, fill it with men,
take possession of the Isle of Wight, and do all he
could to keep it. Would he not be hanged to the
very first tree that could be found high enough ?
He (Mr. Muntz) did not propose to have Sir James
Brooke hanged as a pirate. He believed he was a
fine courageous-A.11,3 *r, crud that -his motives were
good. It was the principle of the thing on which
he grounded his objection. Commercial relations
were never benefited by violence. We have no need
for new colonies as long as Australia and New
Zealand are ours. Why go into the tropics to find
a new settlement, when we have Singapore only a
few hundred miles off, amply sufficient for all
coaling purposes ? It was all very well to talk
about the interests of Christianity ; but it was a
queer sort of Christianity which made them go
thousands of miles to drive the Bible down people's
throats with a bayonet. (Hear.) He should move
as an amendment that the Chamber do not memo-
rialise the Government on the subject.
Mr. WARREN seconded this amendment.
Mr. JOSEPH STURGE said he was anxious to
know from those who called the meeting why
Sarawak should be made an English settlement
more than 50 other places. Upon these gentlemen
lay the onus probandt of showing that Sir James
Brooke had an equitable title to the property which
he now wished to exchange for the money of the
people of England. He (Mr. Sturge) was prepared
to maintain that his title to it was only that of a
pirate. The promoters of the meeting ought also
to show that the transfer would be advantageous to
the people of England.
Mr. J. S. WRIGHT read a letter addressed to him
by Messrs. Gilbart and Robottom, members of the
Chamber, from which the following is an extract:
—" It is well known that Borneo is an island of
very considerable resources ; and with the security
of an established settlement there, it would rapidly
advance, and become as prosperous and valuable to
us as Java is to the Dutch people ; either directly
or indirectly its exports already embrace large
quantities of antimony ore, vegetable tallow, tin,
rattans (much used in this town), gambia, gums,
sago, and sago flour, which latter articles have be-
come very important to some of our British manu-
factures; and if our Government by a formal act of