LTNNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. Ixxiii 



late George Peabody one of the seven Trustees of tlie Museum 

 and Professorship of American Archseology and Ethnology which 

 this philanthropist proceeded 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 be was there- 

 after mainly devoted with the sagacity, skill, diligence, and suc- 

 cess which his seven Annual Reports abundantly testify. 



The later years of his life showed the too rapid progress of his 

 fatal pulmonary disease, which change of climate was incompetent 

 to arrest. In August, 1874, 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 

 September, a severe hemorrhage from the lungs closed his valu- 

 able life. 



The Koyal Society's ' Catalogue of Scientific Papers ' enume- 

 rates sixty-four by Professor Wyman alone, and four in conjunc- 

 tion with others ; and some notice, brief and cursory though it 

 must be, of his published papers should form a part of this account 

 of his life. 



His earliest publication, so far as is known, was an article in 

 the ' Boston Medical and Surgical Journal ' in 1837, signed only 

 with the initials of his name. It Is upon " The Indistinctness of 

 Images formed from Oblique Eays of Light," and the cause of it. 

 In January 1841 there appeared his first recorded communica- 

 tion to the Boston Natural History Society, " On the 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 1 843, part of a paper by his friend Dr. Storer, published in 

 ' Silliman's Journal.' In the course of that year he wrote, in con- 

 junction with Dr. Savage, the memoir, on the Black Orang or Chim- 

 panzee of Africa, Troglodytes niger. Three other papers of that 

 year on the Anatomy of two yLollusca, (Tebennophorus carolinensis 

 and Glandina iruncata), and " On the Microscopic Structure of 

 the Teeth of the Lepidostei, and their analogies with those of the 

 Labyrinthodonts," should also be mentioned. 



Although not of any importance now to remember, it may be 

 interesting to mention his report to the Boston Natural History 

 Society on the so-called Hydrarclws Sillimani of Koch, a factitious 

 Saurian of huge length, successfully exhibited in New York and 



