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By this stage, however, Owen's transgressions were beginning to catch up with him. His undoing began when a committee of the Royal Society—a committee of which he happened to be chairman—decided to award him its highest honor, the Royal Medal, for a paper he had written on an extinct mollusc called the belemnite. "However," as Deborah Cadbury notes in her excellent history of the period, Terrible Lizard, "this piece of work was not quite as original as it appeared."
不過，到這個時候，歐文的壞事快干到頭了。他的垮臺之日到來了。英國皇家學會的一個委員會——歐文恰好是該委員會的主席——決定授予他最高的榮譽：英國皇家勛章，表彰他寫的一篇關于一種名叫箭石的、已經絕種的軟體動物的論文。“然而，”德博拉·卡德伯里在《可怕的蜥蜴》里對那段歷史有絕好的記述，“這項成就并不像看起來那么有創意。”
The belemnite, it turned out, had been discovered four years earlier by an amateur naturalist named Chaning Pearce, and the discovery had been fully reported at a meeting of the Geological Society. Owen had been at that meeting, but failed to mention this when he presented a report of his own to the Royal Society—in which, not incidentally, he rechristened the creature Belemnites owenii in his own honor. Although Owen was allowed to keep the Royal Medal, the episode left a permanent tarnish on his reputation, even among his few remaining supporters.
結果發現，箭石已經于4年前由一位名叫查寧·皮爾斯的業余博物學家發現，而且在地質學會的一次會議上已經充分發表。歐文出席了那次會議，但他向皇家學會提交自己的報告的時候沒有提及這個情況。在那份報告里，他把那種動物重新命名為“歐文的軟體動物”以紀念他自己，這不是偶然的。盡管歐文被允許保留英國皇家勛章，但這件事使得他永遠名聲掃地，即使在他剩下的為數不多的支持者中間也同樣如此。
Eventually Huxley managed to do to Owen what Owen had done to so many others: he had him voted off the councils of the Zoological and Royal societies. As a final insult Huxley became the new Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons.
最后，赫胥黎以其人之道還治其人之身：他通過投票使歐文在動物學會和皇家學會的許多委員會里落選。最后，赫胥黎成為英國皇家外科學院亨特博物館的新一任教授，結束了對歐文的懲罰。
