For permission to publish the Owen letters I am grateful to the Master and Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge. It is a great pleasure to acknowledge the generous assistance both of Dr Michael Bartholomew, who has offered valuable advice at more than one stage in the preparation of this paper, and of Dr Jonathan Hodge, who kindly supplied the lead to Owen's declaration in the Manchester spectator. For the opportunity to study the Whewell papers, I am indebted to the Librarian and library staff of Trinity College, and to the Master and Fellows of Fitzwilliam College who granted a Visiting Fellowship for the Michaelmas Term, 1975.

¹ Owen, Revd Richard, The life of Richard Owen by his grandson (2 vols., London, 1894), i. 253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² [Chambers, Robert], Vestiges of the natural history of creation (London, 1844)Google Scholar. This popular work was published with a much celebrated anonymity. See also Millhauser, M., Just before Darwin (Middletown, Conn., 1959).Google Scholar

³ Trinity College, Add. MS. a21069.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Sedgwick, to Napier, Macvey, 10 04 1845Google Scholar, in Napier, Macvey, son (ed.), Selection from the correspondance of the late Macvey Napier (London, 1879), p. 491.Google Scholar

⁶ See Hodge, M. J. S., ‘The universal gestation of nature: Chambers' Vestiges and Explanations’, Journal of the history of biology, v (1972), 127–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially pp. 133–4.

⁷ Owen, , op. cit. (1), p. 255.Google Scholar

⁸ The closest to a challenge that I have found occurs in a brief footnote in Millhauser, , op. cit. (2), note 8, p. 202Google Scholar: ‘Owen felt that the parts ofthe book he was most competent to judge were substantially correct. Later, there was some talk about his being secretly sympathetic with Vestiges; however, in a private letter to the author, he indicated detailed technical reasons for his dissent from the transmutation hypothesis.’ Since writing this paper I have discovered that Michael Ruse has referred to an unpublished letter from Owen to Whewell as ‘pretty hard on Vestiges, in contrast to the friendly letter Owen wrote to Chambers’; see Ruse, M., ‘The relationship between science and religion in Britain, 1830–1870’, Church history, xliv (1975), 505–22 (516).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹ Owen, , op. cit. (1), pp. 249–52 and 255.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 249.

¹¹ Ibid., pp. 249–50.

¹² Ibid., p. 250.

¹³ Ibid., pp. 250–1.

¹⁴ Ibid., p. 251.

¹⁵ Ibid., pp. 255–6.

¹⁶ Ibid, p. 248.

¹⁷ This is not the place to offer a systematic analysis of Owen's pronouncements on the transmutation question. The following extract from his Fullerian Lectures for 1859 gives a fair impression of his emphasis before Darwin's Origin of species had appeared:

As to the successions, or coming in, of new species, one might speculate on the gradual modifiability of the individual; on the tendency of certain varieties to survive local changes, and thus progressively diverge from an older type; on the production and fertility of monstrous offspring; on the possibility, for example of a variety of auk being occasionally hatched with a somewhat longer winglet, and a dwarfed stature; on the probability of such a variety better adapting itself to the changing climate or other conditions than the old type … but to what purpose? Past experience of the chance aims of human fancy, unchecked and unguided by observed facts, shows how widely they have ever glanced away from the gold centre of truth. (Owen, R., ‘On the extinction of species’, Appendix A to his On the classification and geographical distribution of the mammalia [London, 1859], p. 58.)Google Scholar

Owen frequently suggested that such evidence as there might be for the production of new species by secondary causes could never be compared in kind with that which endorsed the archetypal idea on which a large series of animais had been constructed. For a sensitive account of Owen's priorities and emphases, see Rudwick, M. J. S., The meaning of fossils (London, 1972), pp. 207–14.Google Scholar

¹⁸ It was, of course, the dogmatism ofthe Vestiges that most vexed Sedgwick:

The work finds much favour in London, and is now in a fourth edition! Why? Because of the shallowness of the fashionable reading world, and because of the intense dog-matic form of the work itself. He who asserts boldly and without doubt, will be sure of a school of followers. This is true of religions sects from Mahometans to Newmanites, and it is equally true of philosophic schools. I believe the author is a woman … (Sedgwick, to Napier, , 17 04 1845Google Scholar, in Napier, , op. cit. [5], p. 493.)Google Scholar

¹⁹ Owen, R., On the nature of limbs (London, 1849), pp. 39–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar and 82–6. MacLeod, R. M., ‘Evolutionism and Richard Owen, 1830–1868’, Isis, lvi (1965), 259–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially pp. 264–70.

²⁰ There is (admittedly inconclusive) evidence that about the time Owen was writing to Whewell he believed that the author was probably the politician, metaphysician, and geologist, Sir Richard Vyvyan. The following passage occurs in Bunbury, F. J. (ed.), Life, letters and journals of Sir Charles J. F. Bunbury, Bart. (3 vols., London 1894), i. 292Google Scholar:

A good deal of talk about the ‘Vestiges of Creation’, which I perceive is now one pf the most common topics of conversation. Owen agrees with the common opinion in believing Sir Richard Vyvyan to be the author, though he does not regard it as certain. For this reference I am indebted to Dr Jonathan Hodge.

²¹ Owen, , op. cit. (1), p. 249Google Scholar. The italics are mine.

²² Ibid. The italics are mine.

²³ Ibid., pp. 249–50. The italics are mine.

²⁴ Ibid., p. 250.

²⁵ Chambers, , op. cit. (2)Google Scholar; reprint of the first edition (Leicester, 1969), p. 185.Google Scholar

²⁶ Ibid., p. 186.

²⁷ Owen, , op. cit. (1), p. 250.Google Scholar

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ Ibid., p. 251.

³⁰ Ibid. The italics are mine.

³¹ Ibid.

³² Ibid., p. 252.

³³ Chambers, , op. cit. (25), p. 212.Google Scholar

³⁴ Ibid., p. 213.

³⁵ Hodge, , op. cit. (6), pp. 142–4.Google Scholar

³⁶ Owen, R., Lectures on the comparative anatomy and physiology of the invertebrate animals (London, 1843), p. 147.Google Scholar

³⁷ Ibid., p. 249

³⁸ Owen, to Whewell, , 3 02 1845Google Scholar, Trinity College, Add. MS. a 21070.

³⁹ Hodge, , op. cit. (6), p. 144.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Owen, to Whewell, , 3 02 1845Google Scholar, op cit. (38).

⁴¹ Owen, , op. cit. (1), p. 251.Google Scholar

⁴² Owen, to Whewell, , 14 02 1844 [5]Google Scholar, Trinity College, Add. MS. a 21069.

⁴³ Ibid.

⁴⁴ Ibid.

⁴⁵ Owen, to Whewell, , 3 02 1845, op. cit. (38).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Ibid. The emphasis is Owen's. Dr Michael Bartholomew has evidence that, by a similar sleight of hand, the Revd Owen has given us a misleading account of a correspondence between Owen and Lyell. The account in the Life implies that Lyell rather approved of a review by Owen; whereas, in fact, he was highly critical and wrote ten closely packed pages of argument. As Dr Bartholomew observes, this further proof of the unreliability of Owen's Life raises the question whether the letter to the author of Vestiges might have passed through the editorial mangle. I have not succeeded in tracing the original, but it would certainly be useful if it could be brought to light.

⁴⁷ Millhauser, , op. cit. (2), p. 120.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Whewell, to Forbes, J. D., 04 1845Google Scholar, Trinity College, O. 15. 4759.

⁴⁹ Whewell, W., Indications of the Creator (London, 1846), Preface, p. 21.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Whewell, to Owen, , 13 02 1845Google Scholar; cited in Owen, , op. cit. (1), p. 253.Google Scholar

⁵¹ This was Whewell's reaction to Brewster's passionate review of his History of the inductive sciences:

Nothing short of the most blind and bigoted prejudice could have led [the author of the review] to speak of the University of Cambridge, at the present day, as ‘the cloisters of antiquated institutions, through whose iron bars the light of knowledge and liberty has not been able to penetrate’. This wretched rant is the echo of a slavish tradition, handed down from the brighter and prouder days of the Edinburgh Review. (Whewell to the editor of the Edinburgh Review, 28 October 1837, Trinity College, 289 c 80 8414.)

For an introduction to some of the issues which divided Whewell and Brewster, sec Davie, G., The democratic intellect (Edinburgh, 1961)Google Scholar, and Christie, J. R. R., ‘The rise and fall of Scottish science’, in Crosland, M. P. (ed.), The emergence of science in Western Europe (London, 1975), pp. 111–26.Google Scholar

⁵² Brewster, David, ‘Notice of Whewell's Bridgewater treatise’, Edinburgh review, lviii (1834), 422–57Google Scholar; ‘Whewell's History of the inductive sciences’, ibid., lxvi (1837), 110–51; ‘Whewell's Philosophy of the inductive sciences’, ibid., lxxiv (1842), 265–306.

⁵³ Napier, to Whewell, , 8 02 1845Google Scholar, Trinity College, Add. MS. a 21010.

⁵⁴ Ibid. The emphasis is Napier's.

⁵⁵ Owen, to Whewell, , 22 02 1845Google Scholar, Trinity College, Add. MS. a 21088.

⁵⁶ After having initially declined the invitation, Sedgwick wrote to Napier on 10 April 1845, regretting his ‘want of moral courage’ and so deprecating the shallow and mischievous metaphysics of the supposed authoress as to invite a renewal of the invitation; see Napier, , op. cit. (5), pp. 490–2Google Scholar. Never having written an article for a Review before, Sedgwick threw himself into an 85-page critique that was enough to make men blush, that ‘monster paper of Sedgwick's, from which so much was expected’; see Jeffrey, Lord to Napier, , 8 10 1845Google Scholar, ibid., p. 506. For a brief summary of Sedgwick's attack and a suggestion as to how it may have been perceived by Darwin, see Egerton, F. N., ‘Refutation and conjecture: Darwin's response to Sedgwick's attack on Chambers’, Studies in history and philosophy of science, i (1970), 176–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁷ Whewell, to Sedgwick, , 09 1849Google Scholar, Trinity College, O. 15. 4869.