JEFFRIES WYMAN. 399 
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 zodlogy, and 
his unequaled 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 paleontology, his genius for mor- 
phology, 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 permanent 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 pre- 
vail, 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 ques- 
tion impartially, upon the bare merits of the case; but Wy- 
man’s judgment was as free from bias as that of any one I 
ever knew. Not at all, however, in this case from indifference 
or unconcern. He was not only, philosophically, a convinced 
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 
