Jasper County Democrat, Volume 8, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 October 1905 — How People Bothered Owen. [ARTICLE]

How People Bothered Owen.

Owen was kuown to all circles possessing the slightest tincture of science as the man who could reconstruct an entire extinct animal if you gave him the fragment of a fossil tooth. The public would not buy his books, but they showed their appreciation of his genius in various simple minded fashions. All reports about the sea serpent were referred to him for examination. People who fancied that they had found live toads imbedded in rock or coal wrote to ask him what he thought of it. One day, just as be was setting out to keep a dinner engagement, he was detained for half an hour by a note from a stranger wanting to know whether something he had found In a sausage was or was not the tooth of a dog and requesting an immediate answer. To the credit of the sausage vender it proved to be the tooth of a sucking pig. Ou another occasion, Earl Russell, having received as a present from President Grant what purported to be a bear ham, sent the bone for examination to Owen. One is sorry to hear that the great anatomist at once pronounced it to be the ham bone of an ordinary pig —London Academy.