JEFFRIES WYMAN. 889 
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, 1843, with 
a paper published in Silliman’s Journal, and closed with an 
article in the same Journal in 1854. Although Dr. Fell- 
kamph had preceded him in ascertaining the existence of ru- 
dimentary 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 Professor 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illustrating them, remained unpublished until 1872, when he 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 sense, taking 
the place of vision, and perfectly adapting the animal to its 
subterranean life, is completely demonstrated. 
If Professor Wyman’s first piece of anatomical work was 
the preparation of a skeleton of a bull-frog, in his under- 
graduate days, his most elaborate memoir is that on the 
anatomy of the nervous system of the same animal (/ana 
pipiens), published in the “ Smithsonian Contributions,” in 
1852. 
Anything like an analysis of this 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 abstruse or contro- 
verted questions ;— such, for instance, as the attempts that 
have been made to homologize the nervous system of Articu- 
lates with that of Vertebrates, upon which he has some acute 
criticism ; — the theories that have been propounded respect- 
ing the functions of the cerebellum and its relation to locomo- 
tion, which he tests in a characteristic way by a direct appeal 
to facts ; — the supposition of Cuvier that the special enlarge- 
ments of the spinal cord are in proportion to the force of the 
respective limbs supplied therefrom; which he controverts 
