From this time forward Owen continued to pay as much attention to extinct as to recent animals, as his numerous publications testify. The work fascinated and excited him.
‘There was no hunt,’ he declared, ‘so exciting, so full of interest, and so satisfactory when events prove one to have been on the right scent, as that of a huge beast which no eye will ever see alive, and which, perhaps, no mortal eye ever did behold. Such a chase is not ended in a day, in a week, nor in a season. One’s interest is revived and roused year by year as bit by bit of the petrified portions of the skeleton comes to hand. Thirty such years elapsed before I was able to outline a restoration of _Diprotodon australis_’ [the gigantic extinct kangaroo].
In 1841 appeared his ‘_Description of the Skeleton of an Extinct Gigantic Sloth (Mylodon robustus)_, with observations on the osteology, natural affinities, and probable habits of the megatheroid quadrupeds in general’—‘a masterpiece both of anatomical description and of reasoning and inference,’ as Sir W. Flower calls it. He demonstrated its affinities with the sloths on osteological and dental grounds, and then reasoned out its habits from its configuration; showing that a creature so vast could not have ascended trees, but must have pulled them down to browse on them at its leisure. Then came the work on British Fossil Mammals and Birds, with a long series of memoirs, growing in importance as evidences of new forms, discovered in all parts of the world, came pouring in, as though his own reputation had attracted them; on the Triassic Labyrinthodonts of Central England; on the extinct fauna of South Africa and Australia; on the Reptiles of the Wealden and other formations in England, published by the Paleontographical Society, of which he was one of the first and most ardent supporters; on the _Archæopteryx_ from Solenhofen; on the Great Auk; and on the Dodo, one of the representations of which, in an old Dutch picture, he had the good fortune to discover. It is, indeed, as Mr Huxley remarks, ‘a splendid record: enough, and more than enough, to justify the high place in the scientific world which Owen so long occupied.’
These researches did not pass unrewarded. In 1838 the Geological Society gave to Owen the Wollaston Gold Medal for his work on Darwin’s collections, and it happened, by a fortunate coincidence, that Whewell, his fellow-townsman and school-fellow, occupied the chair on the occasion. In subsequent years he was twice invited to be president of that society; but on both occasions he was compelled to decline. Next, in 1841, Sir Robert Peel offered him a pension of £200 from the Civil List, protesting in a very gracious letter that he knew nothing about his political opinions, but merely wished ‘to encourage that devotion to science for which you are so eminently distinguished.’ This offer, which was gratefully accepted, laid the foundation of an intercourse between Owen and Sir Robert which ripened by-and-by into something like friendship. Dinners in London were succeeded by visits to Drayton, at one of which Owen amused the company with a microscope which he had brought with him (of course quite accidentally); and, finally, his portrait was painted for the gallery there, as a pendant to that of Cuvier. In 1845 Owen refused knighthood.