SKETCH OF PROFESSOR FELIPE POET. 549 



snails, too, Poey and his associate. Dr. Gundlach, were able to act 

 with certainty, as all the species then known were included in the 

 " Monographium Heliceorum Viventium " of Dr. Ludwig Pf eiffer. 



In the year 1842 Poey was appointed to the professorship of Com- 

 parative Anatomy and Zoology in the Royal University of Havana, 

 which chair he still holds, after forty -two years. 



The University of Havana occupies an ancient monastery building 

 in the heart of the city. Like most similar edifices in Cuba and Spain, 

 it is a low building around a hollow paved court, and its whitewashed, 

 time-stained walls have an air of great antiquity. The university has 

 now some twelve hundred students, the great majority of whom are in 

 those departments which lead toward wealth, or social or political- pre- 

 ferment, as law, medicine, and pharmacy. Comparatively few pur- 

 sue literary or philosophical studies, and still fewer are interested in the 

 biological sciences. In the department of botany there are now but 

 two students, and the number in zoology is probably not much greater. 



Although Professor Poey is evidently held in very high respect in 

 the university, in which he has long been dean of the faculty of science, 

 I can not imagine that he ever received much help or sympathy in his 

 scientific work from that quarter, or indeed from any other in Cuba. 

 His friends and countrymen are doubtless glad to be of assistance to 

 so amiable a gentleman as the Senor Don Felipe, but for the claims of 

 science the people of Cuba, as a class, care very little. 



The university library contains but little which could be of help in 

 Professor Poey's zoological studies. He has therefore been compelled 

 to gather a private library of ichthyology. This library has with 

 time become very rich and valuable, many of his co-workers in the 

 study of fishes, notably Dr. Bleeher, having presented him with com- 

 plete series of their published works. 



The museum of the university occupies two little rooms, the one 

 devoted chiefly to Cuban minerals, the other containing mostly mam- 

 mals, birds, and fishes mounted by Poey himself in the earlier days of 

 his professorship. The number of these is not great, nor have many 

 additions been made during the last twenty years. Of late the types 

 of the new species described by Professor Poey have been, after being 

 fully studied by him and represented in life-size drawings, mostly sent 

 to other museums, notably to the United States National Museum, to 

 the Museum of Comparative Zoology and to the Museum of Madrid. 

 Duplicates have been rarely retained in Havana, the cost of keeping 

 up a permanent collection being too great. As a result of this, Pro- 

 fessor Poey's work has sometimes suffered from lack of means of com- 

 paring specimens taken at different times. There is no zoological 

 laboratory in Cuba except the private study of Professor Poey, and 

 here, for want of room and for other reasons, drawings have, to a great 

 extent, taken the place of specimens. 



The publication of the observations of Professor Poey on the 



