172 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE 



Longet on Physiology, and of de Blainville, Isidore St. Hilaire, Valenciennes, Dumeril, 

 and Milne-Edwards on Zoology and Comparative Anatomy. In the summer, when the 

 lectures were over, he made a pedestrian jonrney along the banks of the Loire, and an- 

 other along the Eliine, 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 immediately 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 

 professional livelihood came to him in the offer of the chair of Anatomy and Physiology in 

 the medical department of Hampden-Sydney College, established at Richmond, Virginia. 

 One advantage of this position was that it did not interrupt his residence in Boston excejit 

 for the winter and 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 ses- 

 sions, until, in 1847, he was appointed to succeed Dr. Warren as Hersey Professor of 

 Anatomy in Harvard College, the Parkman jDrofessorship in the Medical School in Boston 

 beuig 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 Pres- 

 ident and Fellows speak in the terms I have already recited. He began his work in 

 Holden Chapel, the u^jper floor being the lecture-room, the lower containing the dissecting 

 room and the anatomical museum of the College, with which he combined his own collec- 

 tions and preparations, which from that time forward increased rapidly in number and 

 value under his industrious 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 themselves worthy of 

 their honored master, while the annual courses of lectures and lessons on Anatomy, Phy- 

 siology, and for a time the principles of Zoology, imparted highly viilued 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 physiological and morphological — no pains and labors were 

 spared, and long and arduous journeys and voyages wei'e made to contribute to its riches. 

 In the summer of 1849, — 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 accompa- 

 nied Captain Atwood of Provincetowm, in a small sloop, upon a fishing 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, accom- 

 panied 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 



