■S92-J Notes and Neivs. "? I I 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



Dr. John Amory Jeffries, one of the original Active Members of the 

 A. O. U., died of pneumonia, March 26, 1893, at his home in Boston, 

 after an illness of but a few days. Dr. Jeffries was born in Milton, Mas- 

 sachusetts, Sept. 2, 1859, and was the youngest son of John and Anna 

 Lloyd [Greene] Jeffries. He entered Harvard College in 1877, find gradu- 

 ating with honors in iSSi, began immediately the study of medicine at 

 'the Harvard Medical School. He received the degree of M. D. in 1884 

 and then went to Europe where for two years more he continued his 

 studies, spending most of the time in Vienna and Berlin. In 1886 he 

 returned to Boston, and from that time until his death was busily en"-a"-ed 

 in the practice of his profession. He was married, Sept. 26, 1889, to Emily 

 Augusta, daughter of the late Frederick Eustis of Milton, who with one 

 son survives him. 



Dr. Jeffries' interest in ornithology developed early, and the active field 

 work which he and his brother, Mr. W. A. Jeffries, carried on too-ether 

 gave him, even before he entered college, an unusually thorough knowl- 

 edge of local ornithology as well as a very considerable collection of 

 birds. His love of outdoor study continued always, but as time went 

 on he turned his attention more and more to anatomical and biological 

 work. During the years of college and medical school he found time to 

 do a surprising amount of anatomical and embryological work upon 

 birds, giving his attention largely to the development of feathers and 

 other epidermal structures. Although but few of the results of these 

 studies ever appeared in print, yet a number of articles in the Bulletin of 

 the Nuttall Ornithological Club and one important paper, 'The Epidermal 

 System of Birds' (,Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., Vol. XXII, 1883, pp. 203- 

 241), serve to show the principal directions his investigations took. 



The training in biological methods that he acquired in this work, to- 

 gether with his love of research, very naturally led him, as his medical 

 studies advanced, into the new field that was opening in bacteriology. To 

 this he devoted much time in the laboratories of Vienna and Berlin, and 

 after his return to Boston he carried out important investigations, which 

 it would be out of place to detail here, but which made him well known 

 among bacteriologists and early led to his election to membership in the 

 American Pediatric Association. His other medical work, aside from the 

 labor of a growing practice, was largely in nervous diseases. Here, up to 

 the time of his death, he had written but little, but with characteristic 

 assiduity had done a gre.it amount of laborious histological study, with 

 the intention of thoroughly grounding himself in the very complex anat- 

 omy of the central nervous system. 



Dr. Jeffries possessed mental gifts well qualified to raise him above his 

 fellows, a quick apprehension, a clear logical sense, and sound judgment, 

 but it was fcilly as much to certain moral qualities as to his intellectual 



