Description
Autograph Letter Signed ‘Richard Owen’, thanking his correspondent for his letter and the Report of his Natural History Society, appreciating “the method of introducing the Sciences of Observation & Comparison into your school”. 2 pp. 7 x 4 inches, in fine condition, integral blank leaf. British Museum, 12 September 1866. Sir Richard Owen (1804–1892), biologist, comparative anatomist and palaeontologist. Owen is probably best remembered today for coining the word Dinosauria and for his outspoken opposition to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. He was the driving force behind the establishment, in 1881, of the British Museum of Natural History in London. In 1841 Owen coined the word ‘dinosaur’ from the Green words Deinos (fearfully great) and sauros (lizard). “I hope and believe you will be one day rewarded by claiming Names of Repute in the advancement of those Sciences as being those of your scholars in whom their germs were implanted & the faculties & tastes for them developed by your happy idea of mutual instruction in the way of an ‘Association’.”