314 THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
A German anatomist, addressing an audience of his countrymen, would feel none
of the difficulty which I experienced" (1849, p. 1). And when Owen attempted to
secure a German translation of this work, he wrote to Rudolf Wagner of Gottingen
(quoted in Desmond, 1982, p. 48): "The subject is better adapted for the character
of mind and thought of a German audience than for our matter of fact English."
As Ospovat (1981) and other scholars have shown, Owen was not the only
British scientist who caught (and rode) the wave of formalist excitement emanating