JEFFRIES WYMAN.

MEMORIAL MEETING

BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY,

OCTOBER 7, 1874.

JEFFRIES WYMAN.

Died 4th September, 1874.

THE wisest man could ask no more of Fate
Than to be simple, modest, manly, true,

Safe from the Many, honored by the Few;
Nothing to count in World, or Church, or State,
But inwardly in secret to be great;

To feel mysterious Nature ever new,

To touch, if not to grasp, her endless clew,
And learn by each discovery how to wait;

To widen knowledge and escape the praise;
Wisely to teach, because more wise to learn;
To toil for Science, not to draw men’s gaze,
But for her lore of self-denial stern;

That such a man could spring from our decays

Fans the soul’s nobler faith until it burn.
Ve 1, We

ei
ron
J

REMARKS OF Pres. Bouve.
ADDRESS OF Pror. ASA GRAY
RESOLUTIONS .

REMARKS OF Dr. STORER .

LETTER oF Pror. RoGERS.

REMARKS OF PRESIDENT BOUVE.

AFTER our usual summer vacation we meet together with
more than accustomed emotion: for, mixed with the joy of
greeting one another after separation, there is a consciousness
of irreparable loss that weighs heavily upon our spirits, a
recognition that there have gone away from us a force and a
virtue which have so long been a help and an inspiration,
that we cannot but feel a sense of loss such as no words of
mine can adequately express. Sad indeed is it for us and for
all, that such nobleness of nature, such wealth of acquired
knowledge, such purity and simplicity of life, as were mani-
-fested in Jerrries Wymay, should pass from the world; for
rare, too rare, are to be found examples of such exalted char-
acter and attainments.

To our Society Prof. Wyman was a great benefactor; not
in the sense of a donor especially, but in the higher sense of
one imparting to it such honorable fame as enhanced greatly
respect for it, both at home and abroad. To him also was
the Society mainly indebted for the interest shown in our
work by the late Dr. Walker, and which led directly to its

large endowment with the means of success.

7)

8

But pleasant as it would be for me, as a personal friend, to
dwell upon the transcendent virtues of one whom I have
always regarded with the highest respect and most affection-
ate esteem, I feel it would be unbecoming to further occupy
your time in view of those present, who have come here with
their tributes of love to the memory of our dear departed
friend. I therefore close by inviting others to address you,
first callmg upon Prof. Gray, who, from his great regard for
Prof. Wyman, has kindly prepared a notice of his life and

work to read on this occasion.

\|
ADDRESS OF PROF. ASA GRAY.

WueEn we think of the associate and friend whose death
this Society now deplores, and remember how modest and re-
tiring he was, how averse to laudation and reticent of words,
we feel it becoming to speak of him, now that he is gone,
with much of the reserve which would be imposed upon us
if he were living. Yet his own perfect truthfulness and nice
sense of justice, and the benefit to be derived from the con-
templation of such a character by way of example, may be
our warrant for reasonable freedom in the expression of our
judgements and our sentiments, taking care to avoid all exag-
geration.

Appropriate and sincere eulogies and expressions of loss,
both official and personal, have, however, already been pro-
nounced or published; and among them one from the gov-
ernors of that institution to which, together with our own
Society, most of Professor Wyman’s official life and services —
were devoted, —which appears to me to delineate in the few-
est words the truest outlines of his character. In it the
President and Fellows of Harvard University “recall with
affectionate respect and admiration the sagacity, patience
and rectitude which characterized all his scientific work, his

clearness, accuracy and conciseness as a writer and teacher,

(9)

10.

and the industry and zeal with which he labored upon the
two admirable collections which remain as monuments of his
rare knowledge, method and skill. They commend to the
young men of the University this signal example of a char-
acter modest, tranquil, dignified and independent, and of a
life simple, contented and honored.”

What more can be or need be said? It is left for me; in
compliance with your invitation, Mr. President, to say some-
thing of what he was to us, and has done for us, and to put
upon record, for the use of those who come after us, some
account of his uneventful life, some notice, however imper-
fect, of his work and his writings. I could not do this with-
out the help of friends who knew him well in early life,
and of some of you who are much more conversant than I
am with most of his researches. Such aid, promptly ren-
dered, has been thankfully accepted and freely used.

Our associate’s father, Dr. Rufus Wyman, — born in Wo-
burn, graduated at Harvard College in 1799, and in the latter
part of his life Physician to the McLean Asylum for the In-
sane, — was a man of marked ability and ingenuity. Called
to the charge of this earliest institution of the kind in New
England at its beginning, he organized the plan of treatment
and devised the excellent mechanical arrangements which
have since been developed, and introduced into other estab-
lishments of the kind. His mother was Ann Morill, daughter
of James Morill, a Boston merchant. This name is contin-
ued, and is familiar to us, in that of our associate’s elder
brother.

Jerrries Wyman, the third son, derived his baptismal
name from the distinguished Dr. John Jeffries, of Boston,

under whom his father studied medicine. He was born on

11

the 11th of August, 1814, at Chelmsford, a township of a
few hundred inhabitants in Middlesex Co., Mass., not far
from the present city of Lowell. As his father took up his
residence at the McLean Asylum in 1818, when Jeffries was
only four years old, he received the rudiments of his educa-
tion at Charlestown, in a private school; but afterwards went
to the Academy at Chelmsford, and, in 1826, to Phillips Ex-
eter Academy, where, under the instruction of Dr. Abbot,
he was prepared for college. He entered Harvard College
in 1829, the year in which Josiah Quincy took the presi-
dency, and was graduated in 1883, in a class of fifty-six, six
of whom became professors in the University. He was not
remarkable for general scholarship, but was fond of chemis-
try, and his preference for anatomical studies was already
developed. Some of his class-mates remember the interest
which was excited among them by a skeleton which he made’
of a mammoth bull-frog from Fresh Pond, probably one
which is still preserved in his museum of comparative an-
atomy. His skill and taste in drawing, which he turned
to such excellent account in his investigations and in the
lecture room, as well as his habit of close observation of nat-
ural objects met with in his strolls, were manifested even in
boyhood.

An attack of pneumonia during his senior year in college
caused much anxiety, and perhaps laid the foundation of the
pulmonary affection which burdened and finally shortened
his life. To recover from the effects of the attack, and to
guard against its return, he made in the winter of 1833-34,
the first of those pilgrimages to the coast of the Southern
States, which in later years were so often repeated. Return-

ing with strength renewed in the course of the following

12

spring, he began the study of medicine under Dr. John C.
Dalton, who had succeeded to his father’s practice at Chelms-
ford, but who soon removed to the adjacent and thriving
town of Lowell. Here, and with his father at the McLean
Asylum, and at the Medical College in Boston, he passed two
years of profitable study. At the commencement of the
third year he was elected house-student in the Medical
Department, at the Massachusetts General Hospital, — then
under the charge of Doctors James Jackson, John Ware
and Walter Channing —a responsible position, not only most
advantageous for the study of disease, but well adapted to
sharpen a young man’s power of observation.

In 1837, after receiving the degree of Doctor of Medicine,
he cast about among the larger country towns for a field in
which to practice his profession. Fortunately for science he
found no opening to his mind; so he took an office in Bos-
ton, on Washington Street, and accepted the honorable, but
far from lucrative post of Demonstrator of Anatomy under
Dr. John C. Warren, the Hersey Professor. His means were
very slender, and his life abstemious to the verge of priva-
tion; for he was unwilling to burden his father, who, in-
deed, had done all he could in providing for the education of
two sons. It may be interesting to know that, to eke out his
subsistence, he became at this time a member of the Boston
Fire Department, under an appointment of Samuel A. Eliot,
Mayor, dated Sept. 1, 1838. He was assigned to Engine
No. 18. The rule was that the first-comer to the engine-
house should bear the lantern, and be absolved from other
work. Wyman lived near by, and his promptitude generally
saved him from all severer labor than. that of enlightening

his company.

18

The turning point in his life, ¢.e., an opportunity which he
could seize of devoting it to science, came when Mr. John A.
Lowell offered him the curatorship of the Lowell Institute,
just brought into operation, and a course of lectures in it.
He delivered his course of twelve lectures upon Compara-
tive Anatomy and Physiology in the winter of 1840-41;
and with the money earned by this first essay in instructing
others, he went to Europe to seek further instruction for
himself, He reached Paris in May, 1841, and gave his time
at once to Human Anatomy at the School of Medicine, and
Comparative Anatomy and Natural History at the Garden
of Plants, attending the lectures of Flourens, Majendie, and
Longet on Physiology, and of de Blainville, Isidore St.
Hilaire, Valenciennes, Dumeril, and Milne-Edwards on Zool-
ogy and Comparative Anutomy. In the summer, when the
lectures were over, he made a pedestrian journey along the
banks of the Loire, and another along the Rhine, returning
through Belgium, and by steamer to London. There, while
engaged in the study of the Hunterian collections at the .
Royal College of Surgeons, he received information of the
alarming illness of his father; he immediatély turned his
face homeward, but on reaching Halifax he learned that his
father was no more.

He resumed his residence in Boston, and devoted himself
mainly to scientific work, under circumstances of no small
discouragement. But in 1843 the means of a modest profes-
sional livelihood came to him in the offer of the chair of
Anatomy and Physiology in the medical department of
Hampden-Sidney College, established at Richmond, Vir-
ginia. One advantage of this position was that it did not
interrupt his residence in Boston except for the winter and

14

spring; and during these months the milder climate of
Richmond was even then desirable. He discharged the
duties of the chair most acceptably for five sessions, until, in
1847, he was appointed to succeed Dr. Warren as Hersey
Professor of Anatomy in Harvard College, the Parkman
professorship in the Medical School in Boston being filled
by the present incumbent, Dr. Holmes. Thus commenced
Prof. Wyman’s most useful and honorable connection as a
teacher with the University, of which the President and
Fellows speak in the terms I have already recited. He began ~
his work in Holden Chapel, the upper tloor being the lecture-
room, the lower containing the dissecting room and the anat-
omical museum of the College, with which he combined-his
own collections and preparations, which from that time for-
ward increased rapidly in number and value under his in-
dustrious and skillful hands. At length Boylston Hall was
built for the anatomical and the chemical departments, and
the museum, lecture and working-rooms were established
commodiously in their present quarters; and Prof. Wyman’s
department assumed the rank and the importance which it
deserved. Both human and comparative anatomy were
taught to special pupils, some of whom have proved them-
selves worthy of their honored master, while the annual
courses of lectures and lessons on Anatomy, Physiology, and
for a time the principles of Zoology, imparted highly valued
instruction to undergraduates and others.

In the formation and perfecting of his museum — the first
of the kind in the country, arranged upon a plan both physi-
ological and morphological—no pains and labors were
spared, and long and arduous journeys and voyages were

made to contribute to its riches. In the summer of 18h9,—
; ng)

15

having replenished his frugal means with the proceeds of a
second course of lectures before the Lowell Institute (viz.,
upon Comparative Physiology, a good condensed short-hand
report of which was published at the time),— he accompanied
Capt. Atwood of Provincetown, in a small sloop, upon a fish-
ing voyage high up the coast of Labrador; in the winter of
1852, going to Florida for his health, he began his fruitful
series of explorations and collections in that interesting
district. In 1854, accompanied by his wife, he travelled
extensively in Europe, and visited all the museums within
his reach. In the spring of 1856, with his pupils, Green and
Bancroft, as companions and assistants, he sailed to Surinam,
penetrated far into the interior in canoes, made important
researches upon the ground, and enriched his museum with
some of its most interesting collections. These came near
being too dearly bought, as he and his companions took the
fever of the country, from which he suffered severely, and
recovered slowly. Again, in 1858-9, accepting the thought-
ful and generous invitation of Capt. J. M. Forbes, he made
a voyage to the La Plata, ascended the Uraguay and the
Parana in a small iron steamer which Capt. Forbes brought
upon the deck of his vessel; then, with his friend George
Augustus Peabody as a companion, he crossed the pampas
to Mendosa, and the Cordilleras to Santiago and Valparaiso,
whence he came home by way of the Peruvian coast and the
Isthmus.

By such expeditions many of the choice materials of his
museum and of his researches were gathered, at his own
expense, to be carefully prepared and elaborated by his own
unaided hands. A vast neighboring museum is a splendid
example of what munificence, called forth by personal enthu-

16

siasm, may accomplish. In Dr. Wyman’s we have an exam-
ple of what one man may do unaided, with feeble health
and feebler means, by persistent and well-directed industry,
without eclét, and almost without observation. While we
duly honor those who of their abundance cast their gifts into
the treasury of science, let us not—now that he can not
be pained by our praise — forget to honor one who in silence
and penury cast in more than they all.

Of penury in a literal sense we may not speak; for al-
though Prof. Wyman’s salary, derived from the Hersey en-
dowment, was slender indeed, he adapted his wants to his
means, foregoing neither his independence nor his scientific
work; and I suppose no one ever heard him complain. In
1856 came unexpected and honorable aid from two old
friends of his father who appreciated the son, and wished
him to go on with his scientific work without distraction.
One of them, the late Dr. William J. Walker, sent him ten
thousand dollars outright; the other, the late Thomas Lee,
who had helped in his early education, supplemented the
endowment of the Hersey professorship with an equal sum,
stipulating that the income thereof should be paid to Prof.
Wyman during life, whether he held the chair or not. Sel-
dom, if ever, has a moderate sum produced a _ greater
benefit.

Throughout the later years of Prof. Wyman’s life a new
museum has claimed his interest and care, and is indebted to
him for much of its value and promise. In 1866, when fail-
ing strength demanded a respite from oral teaching, and
required him to pass most of the season for it in a milder cli-
mate, he was named by the late George Peabody one of the
seven trustees of the Museum and Professorship of American

Li

Archeology and Ethnology, which this philanthropist pro-
ceeded to found in Harvard University; and his associates
called upon him to take charge of the establishment. For
this he was peculiarly fitted by all his previous studies, and
by his predilection for ethnological inquiries. These had
already engaged his attention, and to this class of subjects
he was thereafter mainly devoted,— with what sngacity,
consummate skill, untiring diligence and success, his seven
annual Reports — the last published just before he died,— his
elaborate memoir on shell-heaps, now printing, and especially
the Archeological Museum in Boylston Hall, abundantly
testify. If this museum be a worthy memorial of the found-
er’s liberality and foresight, it is no less a monument of Wy-
man’s rare ability and devotion. Whenever the enduring
building which is to receive it shall be erected, surely the
name of its first curator and organizer should be inscribed,
along with that of the founder, over its portal.

Of Prof. Wyman’s domestic life, let it here suffice to
record, that in Dec., 1850, he married Adeline Wheelwright,
who died in June, 1855, leaving two daughters; that in Au-
gust, 1861, he married Anna Williams Whitney, who died in
February, 1864, shortly after the birth of an only and a sur-
viving son.

Of his later days, of the slow, yet all too rapid progress of
fatal pulmonary disease, it is needless to protract the story.
Winter after winter, as he exchanged our bleak climate for
that of Florida, we could only hope that he might return.
Spring after spring he came back to us invigorated, thanks
to the bland air and the open life in boat and tent, which
acted like a charm;—thanks, too, to the watchful care of

his attached friend, Mr. Peabody, his constant companion in
2

18

Florida life. One winter was passed in Europe, partly in ref-
erence to the Archeological Museum, partly in hope of bet-
ter health; but no benefit was received. The past winter in
Florida produced the usual amelioration, and the amount of
work which Dr. Wyman undertook and accomplished last
summer might have tasked a robust man. There were im-
portant accessions to the archeological collections, upon
which much labor, very trying to ordinary patience, had to
be expended. And in the last interview I had with him, he
told me that he had gone through his own museum of com-
parative anatomy, which had somewhat suffered in conse-
quence of the alterations in Boylston Hall, and had put the
whole into perfect order. It was late in August when he
left Cambridge for his usual visit to the White Mountain
region, by which he avoided the autumnal catarrh; and
there, at Bethlehem, New Hampshire, on the 4th of Septem-
ber, a severe hemorrhage from the lungs suddenly closed his
valuable life.

Let us turn to his relations with this Society. He entered
it in October, 1837, just thirty-seven years ago, and shortly
after he had taken his degree of Doctor in Medicine. He
was Recording Secretary from 1839 to 1841; Curator of
Ichthyology and Herpetology from 1841 to 1847, of Herpe-
tology from 1847 to 1855, of Comparative Anatomy from
1855 to 1874. While in these later years his duties may
have been almost nominal, it should be remembered that in
the earlier days a curator not only took charge of his portion
of the Museum, but in a great degree created it. Then for
fourteen years, from 1856 to 1870, he was the President of
this Society, as assiduous in all its duties as he was wise in

council; and he resigned the chair which he so long adorned

1g

and dignified only when the increasing delicacy of his health,
to which night-exposure was prejudicial, made it unsafe for
him any longer to undertake its duties. The record shows
that he has made here one hundred and five scientific commu-
nications,! several of them very important papers, every one
of some positive value; for you all know that Prof. Wyman
never spoke or wrote except to a direct purpose, and be-
cause there was something which it was worth while to
communicate. He bore his part also in the American Acad-
emy of Arts and Sciences, of which he was a Fellow from the
year 1843, and for many years a Councillor. To it he made
a good number of communications; among them one of the
longest and ablest of his memoirs.

Then he was from the first a member of the Faculty of the
Museum of Comparative Zoology, where his services and his
advice were highly valued. He was chosen President of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science for
the year 1857, but did not assume the duties of the office.

Some notice — brief and cursory though it must be— of
such portion of Dr. Wyman’s scientific work as is recorded
in his published papers, should form a part of this account of
his life.

His earliest publication, so far as we know, was an article
in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, in 1837, signed
only with the initials of his name. It is upon “ The indis-
_ tinetness of images formed from oblique rays of light,” and
the cause of it. The handling of the subject is as character-
istic as that of any later paper. In January, 1841, we find
his first recorded communication to this Society, “On the

tThe Royal Society’s Catalogue of Scientific Papers enumerates sixty-four by
Prof. Wyman alone, and four in conjunction with others.

20

Cranium of a Seal.” The first to the American Academy is
the account of his dissection of the electrical organs of a new
species of Torpedo, in 1848, part of a paper by his friend Dr.
Storer, published in “Silliman’s Journal.” In the course of
that year, eleven communications were made to our Society,
besides the Annual Address, which he delivered on the 17th
of May. The most important of these was the memoir, by
Dr. Savage and himself, on the Black Orang or Chimpanzee
of Africa, Troglodytes niger, published in full in the Jour-
nal of this Society, the anatomical part by Prof. Wyman.
Two other papers of that early year, on the Anatomy of two
Mollusea, Tebennophorus carolinensis and Glandina. trun-
cata, published in the fourth volume of the Society’s Journal,
each with a copper plate, are noteworthy, as showing that he
possessed from the first that happy faculty of clear, terse, and
closely relevant exposition, and that skill and neatness of
illustration with his pencil, which characterize all his work,
both of research and instruction.

Another paper of that year, “ On the microscopic structure
of tha teeth of the Lepidoste?, and their analogies with those
of the Labyrinthodonts,” read to this Society in August, and
published in Silliman’s Journal in October, 1848, was impor-
tant and timely. In it he demonstrated that the labyrinthine
structure of the teeth, considered at the time to be peculiar
to certain sauroid reptiles, equally belonged to the gar-fishes,
and consequently that many fossil teeth which had been re-
ferred by the evidence of this character alone to a group of
reptiles founded upon this peculiarity, might as well belong
to ancient sauroid fishes.

Although not of any importance now to remember, I may

here mention his report to this Society on the Hydrarchos

21

Sillimani of Koch, a factitious Saurian of huge length, suc-
cessfully exhibited in New York and elsewhere under high
auspices, and I think also in Germany, but which Dr. Wy-
man exposed at sight, showing that it was made up of an
indefinite number of various cetaceous vertebrae, belonging
to many individuals, which (as was afterward ascertained)
were collected from several localities.

But the memoir by which Prof. Wyman assured his posi-
tion among the higher comparative anatomists was that,
communicated to and published by this Society in the
summer of 1847, in which the Gorilla was first named and
introduced to the scientific world, and the distinctive struc-
ture and affinities of the animal so thoroughly made out
from the study of the skeleton, that there was, as the great
English Anatomist remarked, “very little left to add, and
nothing to correct.” In this memoir the “ Description of the
habits of Troglodytes Gorilla,” is by Dr. Thomas §. Savage,
to whom, along with Dr. Wilson, “belongs the credit of the
discovery”; the Osteology of the same and the introductory
history are by Dr. Wyman. Indeed, nearly all since made
known of the Gorilla’s structure, and of the affinities soundly
deduced therefrom, has come from our associate’s subsequent
papers, founded on additional crania brought to him in 1849,
by Dr. George A. Perkins of Salem; on a nearly entire male
skeleton of unusual size, received in 1852, from the Rey. Wil-
liam Walker, and now in Wyman’s museum; and on a large
collection of skins and skeletons placed at his disposal in
1859, by Du Chaillu, along with a young Gorilla in spirits,
which he dissected. It is in the account of this dissection

that Prof. Wyman brings out the curious fact that the skull

&

22

of the young Gorilla and Chimpanzee bears closer resem-
blance to the adult than to the infantile human cranium.

In Prof. Wyman’s library, bound up with a quayto copy
of the Memoir by Dr. Savage and himself, is a terse but
complete history of this subject, in his neat and clear hand-
writing, and with copies of the letters of Dr. Savage, Prof:
Owen, Mr. Walker, and M. du Chaillu.

In the introductory part of the Memoir, Prof. Wyman
states that “the specific name, Gorilla, has been adopted,
a term used by Hanno in describing the wild men found on
the coast of Africa, probably one of the species of the
Orang.” The name, Troglodytes Gorilla, is no doubt to be
cited as of Savage and Wyman, and it was happily chosen
by Prof. Wyman, after consultation with his friend, the late
Dr. A. A. Gould, for the reason just stated. But it is inter-
esting to see, in the correspondence before me, how strenu-
ously each of the joint authors deferred to the other the .
honor of nomenclature. Dr. Savage from first to last insists,
in repeated and emphatic terms, that the scientific name
shall be given by Dr. Wyman as the scientific describer, and
that he could not himself honestly appropriate it. Prof.
W yman, in his Mss. account, after mentioning what his por-
tion of the Memoir was, and that “the determination of the
differential characters on which the establishment of the
species rests was prepared by me,” briefly and characteris-
tically adds: “In view of this last fact, Dr. Savage thought,
as will be seen in letter, that the species should stand in my
name; but this I declined.” :

This Memoir was read before this Society on the 18th of
August, 1847, and was published before the close of the year.
But it had not, as it appears, come to Prof. Owen’s knowl-

23

edge when the latter presented to the London Zoological
Society, on the 22d of February, 1848, a memoir founded
on three skulls of the same species, just received from Africa
through Capt. Wagstaff. When Prof. Owen received the
earlier Memoir, he wrote to compliment Prof. Wyman upon
it, substituted in a supplementary note the specific name im-
posed by Savage and Wyman, and reprinted in an appendix
the osteological characters set forth by the latter. “It does
not appear, however (adds Dr. Wyman), either in the Pro-
ceedings or the Transactions of the [Zoological] Society, at
what time our Memoir was published, nor that we had antici-
pated him in our description.”

It is safe to assert that in this and the subsidiary papers of
Dr. Wyman, may be found the substance of all that has since
been brought forward, bearing upon the osteological resem-
blances and differences between men and apes. After sum-
ming up the evidence, he concludes : —

“The organization of the anthropoid Quadrumana justifies
the naturalist in placing them at the head of the brute
creation, and placing them in a position in which they, of
all the animal series, shall be nearest to man. Any anatomist,
however, who will take the trouble to compare the skeletons
of the Negro and Orang, cannot fail to be struck at sight
with the wide gap which separates them. The difference be-
tween the cranium, the pelvis, and the conformation of the
upper extremities in the “Negro and Caucasian, sinks into
comparative insignificance when compared with the vast
difference which exists between the conformation of the same
parts in the Negro and the Orang. Yet it cannot be denied,
however wide the separation, that the Negro and Orang do

afford the points where man and the brute, when the totality

24

of their organization is considered, most nearly approach
each other.”

Selecting now for further comment only some of the more
noticeable contributions to science, we should not pass by his
investigations of the anatomy of the Blind Fish of the Mam-
moth Cave. The series began, in that prolific year, 1848,
with a paper published in “Silliman’s Journal,” and closed
with an article in the same Journal in 1854. Although Dr.
Tellkamph had preceded him in ascertaining the existence of
rudimentary eyes and the special development of the fifth
pair of nerves, yet for the whole details of the subject, and
the minute anatomy, we are indebted to Prof. Wyman.
Many of the details, however, as well as the admirable
drawings illustrating them, remained unpublished until 1872,
when he placed them at Mr. Putnam’s disposal, and they
were brought out in his elaborate article in the “American
Naturalist.” Here the extraordinary development of tactile
seuse, taking the place of vision, and perfectly adapting the
animal to its subterranean life, is completely demonstrated.

If Prof. Wyman’s first piece of anatomical work was the
preparation of a skeleton of a bull-frog, in his undergraduate
days, his most elaborate memoir is that on the anatomy of
the nervous system of the same animal (tana pipiens), pub-
lished-in the “ Smithsonian Contributions,” in 1852 (51 pages,
royal 4to, with 2 plates).

Anything like an analysis of thi§ capital investigation and
exposition would much overpass our limits. For, although
the special task he assigns to himself is the description
of the nervous system of a single Batrachian, chiefly of its
peripheral portion, and of the changes undergone during

metamorphosis, he is led on to the consideration of several

25

abstruse or controverted questions ;— such, for instance, as
the attempts that have been made to homologize the
nervous system of Articulates with that of Vertebrates, upon
which he has some acute criticism; — the theories that
have been propounded respecting the functions of the cere-
bellum and its relation to locomotion, which he tests in a
characteristic way by a direct appeal to facts ;— the supposi-
tion of Cuvier that the special enlargements of the spinal
cord are in proportion to the force of the respective limbs
supplied therefrom; which he controverts decisively by
similar appeal, an extract from which I beg leave to append
in a note.’

So, in describing the structure of the optic nerves in the
frog, and the development of the eye and optic lobes, he pro-
ceeds to remark, that —

“The instances of Protews and Amblyopsis naturally sug-
gest the questions, whether one and the same part may not

combine functions wholly different in different animals, and

1<Tf by force is meant the muscular energy and development of the limbs, this
statement does not appear to be sustained in the present instance, nor in many
other instances brought to notice by comparative anatomy. In man the brachial
enlargement is always larger than the crural, though the legs are so much more
powerfully developed than the arms, and the same is true of the greater number
of mammals. In frogs there is a still greater disproportion between legs and arms
yet there is not a corresponding difference in the size of the bulgings. They can-
not, therefore, be said to be in proportion to the muscular force only of the limbs,
but correspond far more nearly to the acuteness of the sense of touch, which in
man and mammals is more delicate in the hands and arms than in the legs and
feet. In bats, it is true that the muscular force of the arms is greater than that of
the legs, and that the brachial far surpasses the crural enlargement; but, at the
same time, the sense of touch in the membranes of the wings is exalted to a most
extraordinary degree. In birds the posterior bulging is almost universally the
largest, though this condition is in part dependent upon the presence of the rhom-
boidal sinus. In these animals, while the muscular energy of the wings is the

most developed, the sensibility of the feet is the more acute.”

26

whether the same may not hold true with regard to the cere-
bral organs which is known to obtain with regard to the
skeleton, the teeth, the tongue, and the nose, that identical.
or homologous parts in different animals may perform fune-
tions wholly distinct. If the doctrine here suggested can be
admitted (and if this were the place facts could be cited in
support of it), may we not find in it an explanation of many
inconsistencies which now exist between the results of com-
parative anatomy and of physiology ?”

Then, in his chapter on the philosophical anatomy of the
cranial nerves and skull, after showing that there are but
three pairs of cranio-spinal nerves, he takes up the contro-
verted question as to the number of vertebrae which compose
the skull, and supports the opinion that they also are only
three in a characteristic manner.?

Of this whole memoir it is thought that, notwithstanding
the great advance which has been made in comparative anat-
omy during the twenty-five years which have elapsed since
it was published, its importance to the student has not at all

diminished.

1“ The conclusions which haye been drawn from the statements made above
are as follows: that in frogs the vagus comprises the glosso-pharyngeal and acces-
sory nerves; that the trigeminuws comprises the facial, the abducens, and in the
salamanders the patheticus and portions of the motor communis; that other evi-
dence sustains the hypothesis, that the whole of the motor communis is a depend-
ence of the trigeminus; if to these we add the hypoglossus (which in frogs is
exceptionally a spinal nerve), we shall have three pairs of cranial nerves, each
having all the characters of a common spinal nerve, namely, motor and sensitive
roots and a ganglion; that there are no nerves to indicate a fourth vertebra, unless
the special sense nerves are considered; if these are admitted as indications, then
we must presuppose either two pairs of nerves to each vertebra, or the existence
of six vertebre, which is a larger number than can be accounted for on an osteo-
logical basis. The functions and mode of development of the special sense nerves
we have taken as affording sufficient grounds for considering them as of a peculiar
order, and not to be classified with common spinal nerves.”

27

Next to this in extent and value may be ranked Prof.
Wyman’s paper on the development of the common skate of
our waters (Raia Batis), communicated to the American
Academy in 1864, and published among its Memoirs. It
gives an account of the peculiar egg-case of the Selachians,
and of the several stages of the development of the embryo
skate, expressed in the concise and clear language — as little
technical as possible, —for which he was distinguished, and
leading up to not afew problems in comparative anatomy,
morphology, or systematic zoology, — problems which Prof.
Wyman never evaded when they came directly in his way,
and seldom handled without making some real contribution
to their elucidation. For instance, in describing the external
branchial fringes of the young skate, he notes the agreement
in this character with the Batrachians; and in studying the
seven branchial fissures of the embryo, he is brought into
contact with the view of Huxley, that the formation of the
external ear is by involution of the integument. After con-
firming the contrary observations of Reichert, on the embryo
pig, he concludes that “the first of the seven branchial fis-
sures of the embryo skate is converted into the spiracle,
which is the homologue of the Eustachian tube and the outer
ear-canal.” After a full discussion of the homology of the
upper jaw in sharks and skates, under the light afforded by
his investigation of the embryo skate, he suggests that the
cartilage which extends from the olfactory fosse towards the
pectoral fin is the probable homologue of a maxillary bone,
and that in the lobe, the homologue of an intermaxillary ;
that, if so, the skates and proteiform reptiles agree in having
the nostrils open in front of the dental arch; that while in
all Batrachians the nasal groove becomes closed, in the skate

28

it remains permanently open; and finally that this view, if
confirmed, “will add another feature which justifies Owen,
Agassiz and others, in dissenting from Cuvier so far as to
give the Selachians a place in the zoological series higher
than that of the bony fishes. But at the same time, it will
give corroborative proof of the correctness of Cuyier’s view,
that ‘the rudiments of the maxillaries, and intermavillaries,
.... are evident in the skeleton, ”

In attempting these analyses, I am drifting into a fault
which Prof. Wyman never committed, that of being too
long. So I must leave many of his papers unmentioned,
and barely refer to two‘or three others which cannot be
passed over. The most noteworthy of the shorter papers,
however, are upon less technical or more generally interest-
ing topics, so that we have need only to be reminded of
them. Among them are his “ Observations on the Develop-
ment of the Surinam Toad,” and the same of “Anableps
Gronovii,” and the paper “On some unusual Modes of Ges-
tation.” The importance of these papers lies, not in being
accounts of some of the most striking curiosities of the ani-
mal world, but in the sagacity and quickness with which he
discerned, and the clearness with which he taught, the lessons
to be learned from them. Any good zoologist, with the same
excellent opportunities, would have worked out all the de-
tails of the development of the Surinam toads in the skin of
the back of their mother, and would equally have noted the
morphological significance of the branchiz and _ tail, that
are never to knew any thing of the element they are adapted
for; but Dr. Wyman remarks upon the development of the
limbs independently of the vertebral axis, as showing that,

whatever view be taken of their homology, they are some-

29

thing superadded to it, and not evolved from it; he notes
how the whole yelk-mass is moulded into a spiral intestine ;
and that the embryo at the end of incubation forms a larger
and heavier mass than existed in the egg when it com-
menced, — showing that there was an absorption of meterial
furnished by the dermal sac of the mother, —“a solitary in-
stance among Batrachians, if not among Reptiles generally,
in which the embryo is nourished at the expense of materials
derived from the parent.” From this he is led (in the later
paper above mentioned), to infer the probability that the
developed larvee of Hylodes lineatus,—— carried about inland
upon the back of their mother, and destitute of limbs
adapted to terrestrial locomotion, — may depend upon a se-
cretion from the body for needful sustenance —an interesting
and rudimentary foreshadowing of mammalian life, of which
he discerned the bearings.

His “ Description of a Double Fetus” (in the “ Boston
Medical and Surgical Journal, March, 1866), gives him the
opportunity of briefly recording some of the results of his
studies of the development of double monsters, and to bring
out his view, that “the force, whatever it be, which regulates
the symmetrical distribution of matter in a normal or abnor-
mal embryo, has its analogy, if anywhere, in those known as
polar forces”; that “studying the subject in the most general
manner, there are striking resemblances between the distri-
bution of matter capable of assuming a polar condition, and
free to move around a magnet, and the distribution of mat-
ter around the nervous axis of an embryo.” That this is not
one of those vague conceptions by which many speculators
set about to explain that of which they know little by means
of that of which they know less, but that he had striking

30

parallelisms to adduce, the close of this striking paper
shows.

The subject of fore and hind symmetry, thus brought
directly under notice, had been broached by Dr. Wyman
several years before. He returned to it the year following,
in his very important morphological paper, “On Symmetry
and Homology in Limbs,” read to this Society in June, 1867,
and published in the Proceedings of that date. It is inter-
esting to observe with what caution and restraint he handled
this doctrine of “reversed repetitions,” which has since been
freely developed by one of his pupils who has a special pre-
dilection for speculative morphology, Prof. Burt Wilder.

Prof. Wyman’s “ Notes on the Cells of the Bee,” in the
“ Proceedings of the American Academy” for January, 1866,
is a characteristic specimen of his way of coming directly
down to the facts, and making them tell their own story. I
could not recapitulate his results much more briefly than he
records them in his paper. I need not recall to you how
neatly he made this investigation, and represented some of
the results, fillimg the comb with plaster-ofparis and then
cutting it across midway, so that the observations might be
made and the cells measured just where they are most nearly
perfect ; and then printing impressions of the comb upon the
wood-block, he reproduces on the pages of his article the
exact outlines of the cells, with all their irregularities and
imperfections. But I cannot refrain from citing a porticn of
his remarks at the close: —

“ Here, as is so often the case elsewhere in nature, the type-
form is an ideal one; and with this real forms seldom or
never coincide. . . . . An assertion, like that of Lord
Brougham, that there is in the cell of the bee ‘ perfect agree-

ment’ between theory and observation, in view of the anal-

31

ogies of nature is more likely to be wrong than right; and
his assertion in the case before us is certainly wrong. Much
error would have been avoided if those who have discussed
the structure of the bee’s cell had adopted the plan followed
by Mr. Darwin, and studied the habits of the cell-making
insects comparatively, beginning with the cells of the humble-
bee, following with those of wasps and hornets, then with
those of the Mexican bees (Melipona), and finally with those
of the common hive-bee. In this way, while they would
have found that there is a constant approach to the perfect
form, they would at the same time have been prepared for
the fact, that even in the cell of the hive-bee perfection is
not reached. The isolated study of anything in natural his-
tory-is a fruitful source of error.”

Let me add to this important aphorism its fellow, which I
haye from him, but know not if he ever printed it. “ Wo
single experiment in physiology is worth anything.”

The spirit of these aphorisms directed all his work. It is
well exemplified in his experimental researches —the lust
which I can here refer to, upon —“ The formation of Infusoria
in boiled solutions of organic matter, enclosed in hermetic-
ally sealed vessels and supplied with pure air,” and its sup-
plement, “Observations and Experiments on living organisms
in heated water,” published in the American Journal of Sci-
ence and Arts, the first in the year 1862, the other in 1867.
Milne-Edwards could not have known the man, when he
questioned the accuracy of the first series because they do
not agree with those of Pasteur, and thought the difference
in the results depended upon a defective mode of conduct-
ing the experiments. As Dr. Wyman remarks in a note to

the second series, “the recent experiments of Dr. Child of

32

Oxford, and those reported in this communication, are suffi-
cient answer to the criticisms of M. Edwards.” Then as to
his thoroughness: — most persons would have rested on the
results of his thirty-three well-devised experiments, proving
“that the boiled solutions of organic matter made use of
exposed only to air which has passed through tubes heated
to redness, became the seat of infusorial life ;” but all would
not have concluded that, after all, they “throw but little
light on the immediate source from which the organisms have
been derived,” nor would many have closed an impartial
summary of the opposing views in this judicial way: —

“Tf, on the one hand, it is urged that all organisms, in so
far as the early history of them is known, are derived from
ova, and therefore from analogy we must ascribe a similar
origin to these minute beings the early history of which we
do not know, it may be urged with equal force, on the other
hand, that all ova and spores, in so far as we know anything
about them, are destroyed by prolonged boiling; therefore
from analogy we are equally bound to infer that Vibrios,
Bacterians, ete., could not have been derived from ova, since
these would all have been destroyed by the conditions to
which they have been subjected. The argument from anal-
ogy is as strong in the one ease as in the other.”

Returning to the subject again a few years later, with a
critical series of twenty experiments, each of three, five, ten,

fifteen, or even twenty flasks, used by way of checks and com-

parisons, —a rigorous experimenter would have beeh satisfied
when he had proved that sealed solutions subjected to a heat
of at least 212° for from one to four hours, became the seat
of infusorial life, at least of such as Vibrios, Bacterians and

Monads, while all infusoria having the faculty of locomotion

39

were shown by a special series of experiments to lose this at
a temperature of 120°, or at most 134° Fahr. But Prof.
Wyman carried the boiling up to jive hours, and in these
flasks no infusoria of any kind appeared. The question of
abiogenesis stands to-day very much where Prof. Wyman
left it seven years ago.

I must omit all notice of the ethnological work which has
occupied his later years, merely referring to the seven Annual
Reports of the Trustees of the Peabody Museum of Ameri-
can Archeology and Ethnology, of which he was curator.
The last of these, issued just before the writer’s death, con-
tains the principal results of his investigation of the human
remains he collected in the shell-heaps of East Florida, and
convincing evidence of the cannibalism of those who made
them. A fuller memoir, embodying all his observations of
the last six winters upon the Florida shell-mounds, was sent
to the printer just before he died.

The thought that fills our minds upon a survey even so
incomplete as this is: How much he did, how well he did it
all, and how simply and quietly! We knew that our asso-
ciate, though never hurried, was never idle, and that his
great repose of manner covered a sustained energy; but I
suspect that none of us, without searching out and collecting
his published papers, had adequately estimated their number
and their value. There is nothing forth-putting about them,
nothing adventitious, never even a phrase to herald a matter
which he deemed important.

His work as a teacher was of the same quality. He was
one of the best lecturers I ever heard, although, and partly
because, he was the most unpretending. You never thought

of the speaker, nor of the gifts and acquisitions which such
3

34

clear exposition were calling forth, — only of what he was
simply telling and showing you. Then to those who, like his
pupils and friends, were in personal contact with him, there
was the added charm of a most serene and sweet temper.
He was truthful and conscientious to the very core. His
perfect freedom, in lectures as well as in writing, and no
less so in daily conversation, from all exaggeration, false
perspective, and factitious adornment, was the natural ex-
pression of his innate modesty and refined taste, and also of
his reverence for the exact truth.

It has been a pleasure to learn, from former college stu-
dents, who hardly ever saw him except in the lecture-room,
that he gave to them much the same impression of his gifts
and graces, and sterling worth, that he gave us who knew
him intimately — so transparent was he, and natural.

With all his quick sense of justice, and no lack of occasion
for controversy, it seemed to cost him no effort to avoid it
altogether. He made no enemies, and was surrounded by
troops of life-long friends. When he first went abroad, in
1841, he was told by some near friends, who recognized his
promise, that a chair of Natural History in his alma mater
would soon have to be filled, and that he should be presented
as a candidate. In the winter following, the present incum-
bent, responding to an invitation to visit Boston, which he
had never seen, and to consider if he would be a candidate,
then first heard of Wyman’s name and of his friends’ ex-
pectations or hopes; whereupon he dismissed the subject
from his mind. Probably he felt more surprise than did Dr.
Wyman when notified, a few months afterwards, of the choice
of the Corporation. The exigencies of the Botanic Garden
probably overbore other considerations. I doubt if Dr. Wy-

35

man ever had an envious feeling. Certain it is that no one
welcomed the new professor with truer cordiality, or proved
himself a more constant friend.

In these days it is sure to be asked how an anatomist,
physiologist, and morphologist like Prof. Wyman regarded
the most remarkable scientific movement of his time, the
revival and apparent prevalence of doctrines of evolution.
As might be expected, he was neither an advocate nor an
opponent. He was not one of those persons who quickly
make up their minds, and announce their opinions, with a
confidence inversely proportionate to their knowledge. He
could consider long, and hold his judgment in suspense.
How well he could do this appears from an early, and so far
as I know, his only published presentation of the topic, in a
short review of Owen’s “Monograph of the Aye-Aye” (in
Am. Journ. Science, Sept., 1863) —the paper in which Prof.
Owen’s acceptance of evolution, but not of natural selec-
tion, was promulgated. Dr. Wyman compares Owen’s view
with that of Darwin (to whom he had already communicated
interesting and novel illustrations of the play of natural
selection) ; and he adds some acute remarks upon a rather
earlier speculation by Mr. Agassiz, in which the latter sug-
gests that the species of animals might have been created as
eggs rather than as adults. He states the case between the
two general views with perfect impartiality, and the bent of
his own mind is barely discernible. In due time he satisfied
himself as to which of them was the more probable, or, in
any case, the more fertile hypothesis. As to this, I may ven-
ture to take the liberty to repeat the substance of a conversa-
tion which I had with him sometime after the death of the

36

lamented Agassiz, and not long before his own. I report the
_ substance only, not the words.

Agassiz repeated to me, he said, a remark made to him by
Humboldt, to the effect that Cuvier made a great mistake,
and missed a great opportunity, when he took the side he
did in the famous controversy with Geoffroy St. Hilaire; he
should have accepted the doctrines of morphology, and
brought his vast knowledge of comparative anatomy and zo-
ology, and his unequalled powers, to their illustration. Had
he done so, instead of gaining by his superior knowledge
some temporary and doubtful victories in a lost cause, his
preéminence for all our time would have been assured and
complete. I thought, continued Wyman, that there was a
parallel case before me,—that if Agassiz had brought his
vast stores of knowledge in zoology, embryology, and_palee-
ontology, his genius for morphology, and all his quickness
of apprehension and fertility in illustration, to the elucidation
and support of the doctrine of the progressive development
of species, science in our day would have gained much, some
grave misunderstandings been earlier rectified, and the per-
manent fame of Agassiz been placed on a broader and higher
basis even than it is now.

Upon one point Wyman was clear from the beginning.
He did not wait until evolutionary doctrines were about to
prevail, before he judged them to be essentially philosophical
and healthful, “in accordance with the order of Nature, as
commonly manifested in her works,” and that they need not
disturb the foundations of natural theology.

Perhaps none of us can be trusted to judge of such a
question impartially, upon the bare merits of the case; but
Wyman’s judgment was as free from bias as that of any one

37

IT ever knew. Not at all, however, in this case from indiffer-
ence or unconcern. He was not only, philosophically, a con-
vinced theist, in all hours and under all “variations of mood
and tense,” but personally a devout man, an habitual and
reverent attendant upon Christian worship and ministrations.

Those of us who attended his funeral must have felt the
appropriateness for the occasion of the words which were
there read from the Psalmist :—

“The Heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament
showeth his handy-work..... O Lord, how manifold are
thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all; the earth
is full of thy riches; so is this great and wide sea, wherein
are things creeping innumerable, both great and small beasts.

-Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created, and thou
renewest the face of the earth.”

These are the works which our associate loved to investi-
gate, and this the spirit in which he contemplated them.
Not less apposite were the Beatitudes that followed :—

Blessed are the meek ; blessed are the peace-makers ; blessed
are the merciful ; blessed are the pure in heart.

Those who knew him best, best know how well he exem-
plified them.

RESOLUTIONS.

Mr. F. W. Putnam offered the following Resolutions : —

Resolved: —'That in the death of Jerrrirs Wyman the Boston
Society of Natural History mourns the loss of a most honored mem-
ber and efficient officer; one who was untiring in his labors for the
Society during his long and active connection with it as Curator,
Secretary and President; and that, in his death, Science has lost a
most thorough and careful investigator, and the cause of education
and truth a most devoted and conscientious disciple.

Resolved: —'That as members of a Society who gave to Professor
Wyman the highest honor and position we could bestow, we ac-
knowledge our indebtedness to him for the thoughtfulness and care
with which he guided our labors for so many years, and, while filled
with sorrow at our own loss, we ask the privilege, by transmission of
these resolutions, of extending our sympathy to his bereaved family

in their great trial.

These Resolutions were seconded by Dr. D. H. Storer,
who said : —

Mr. President, I most cordially second the adoption of the
Resolutions which have been presented. The scientific repu-
tation of our departed friend was universally acknowledged,
but the beauty of his life was equally worthy of admiration.
I never knew a gentler, purer, nobler spirit. As a brother I

loved him, and I mourn him.

The Resolutions were unanimously adopted.

LETTER FROM PROF. ROGERS.

Newport, Oct. 6, 1874.
To Pres. Bouv#,

My dear friend: —I regret that it will not be in my power to at-
tend the meeting of the Natural History Society tomorrow evening,
as I should greatly desire to unite with you in an affectionate trib-
ute to the memory of Prof. Wyman, whose long services as Pres-
ident of the Society, and whose peculiar excellences as a student of
nature must ever claim our regard and admiration.

From my first acquaintance with him, while engaged in the delicate
microscopic dissections with which he illustrated the work of the late
Dr. Amos Binney on Land-shells, until within a few years past, I
have had frequent opportunities of marking his scientific progress;
and although but little acquainted with the inquiries to which he
chiefly devoted himself, I have understood enough of his labors to
appreciate his singular patience and accuracy as an observer, his
ingenuity in devising experiments, and the caution and conscientious- -
ness with which he was accustomed to report the results of his
investigations. ;

These qualities, early recognized by his scientific co-workers
abroad as well as at home, placed him in the front rank of the pro-
moters of the biological sciences. To these intellectual gifts was
added a modesty and self-forgetfulness which, while they were un-
favorable to the more popular recognition of his merits, have ren-
dered his example preéminently worthy of imitation by all honest
seekers after truth. Yours faithfully,

Wiriiam B. Rogers.

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