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Show 98 MR. ('DELIVER ON THE UI.OOD-CORPUSCLES. [Feb. 10, declaration that " This generalization has not been affected by later observations." He does not scruple to borrow without acknowledgment from my Tables of Measurements (Comp. An. ii. 184); though hinting more than once that they are "insignificant" or "unimportant," and this under cover of references to the French translation of them by Milne-Edwards and not to m y own original version. Indeed, to this illustrious physiologist Prof. Owen refers on this question, as both Milne-Edwards and his son Alphonse Milne- Edwards have been moved to make the emphatic assertion that the minuteness of the blood-disks of Tragulus was discovered by Prof. Owen. But this is a misstatement, as the very reference made in its behalf, to the 'London Medical Gazette,' 1839-40, will prove. A careful search throughout those volumes, not excepting the curious zoologico-anthropological characteristics in the " Extra Limites," vol. ii. p. 671*, will fail to find mention of more than a single Tragulus ; and that occurs, with his first notice of the blood of Camels, in the number for December 20, 1839 : all the few measurements in that paper were by Mr. Bowerbank ; and " Moschus pygmceus" is the only Tragulus mentioned therein. But, as Prof. Owen has long since well known, m y observations on the minuteness of the blood-disks of Tragulus, on the shape and size of those of certain Camels, and on their structure in this whole family, were read, as before said, at a meeting of the Medico- Chirurgical Society on the 26th of November previously, published in the 23rd volume of the Transactions of that Society, and, with my description of the same corpuscles of Marsupials, in the ' Dublin Medical Press' of November 27, in the 'London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine' of December 1, all of the same year, and in several other periodical works either of the first day of December, or at least before the date of Prof. Owen's paper. And of his acquaintance with m y paper that had been read at the Medico-Chi-rurgical Society on the 26th of November, he has left published proof in a footnote to his own paper of the succeeding 20th of December, in which he quotes mine of the preceding 26th of November as to the lymph-globules of Tragulus and the Camels, but omits any notice of m y description therein of the blood-disks of those animals ; only he says that the minuteness of the blood-disks of Moschus pygmceus is such as he "had anticipated;" and so, no doubt, he had, with m y published proof of that minuteness before him. In the foregoing notices an attempt has been made to assert the truth respecting a branch of physiological history to which the best part of m y life has been devoted. Should it be supposed that I have now been influenced only by considerations personal to myself, I can but truly deny the imputation, and refer in proof to m y published writings, in which quite as much zeal has been shown in defending the rights of Davies, Hewson, and others from unjust aggression as I have here exercised in behalf of m y own just claims. Had private persons been the authors of the errors now corrected, they might have passed, like several similar ones, without notice; but Professor |
