JEFFRIES WYMAN 173 



Jeffries was the third son and was named for his father's medi- 

 cal preceptor. He was born at Chelmsford, near Lowell, Mass., 

 August n, 1814. His early education was received at a school 

 in Charlestown, kept by Horatio Gates. Of this period, while 

 he was between seven and ten years old, there is preserved a record 

 consisting of weekly entries in a little book dated from October 

 2oth, 1821, to March 27th, 1824. The first entry is "Studies very 

 well"; the last, "Is a good boy." Between are "A fine little fel- 

 low"; "at the head of his class," etc. Later he attended the 

 Academy at Chelmsford and prepared for college under Dr. 

 Benjamin Abbott. He entered Harvard in 1829, the first year of 

 the presidency of Josiah Quincy, and was graduated in due course; 

 of the fifty- three members of the class of 1833 six, including 

 Wyman, became professors in their alma mater. 



In the spring of his senior year, Wyman had a dangerous attack 

 of pneumonia which, says Dr. Holmes, "seems to have laid the 

 foundation of the pulmonary affection that kept him an invalid 

 and ended by causing his death." To recover from the effects 

 of this attack he passed the following winter in Georgia and South 

 Carolina. This flight southward at the approach of winter was 

 the precursor of many others by which his life was undoubtedly 

 prolonged. 



His interest in natural objects was early manifested. When less 

 than ten years old he spent his holidays largely along the banks 



of Wyman's writings which, although marred by errors and omissions, was 

 reproduced in the volume, Animal Mechanics, (articles by Sir Charles 

 Bell and Jeffries Wyman, edited, with portrait, by Morrill Wyman in 1902); 

 by Frederick W. Putnam (Report of the Council [on Deceased Members] in 

 Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, n. s., vol. 10, 

 l8 75> PP- 496-505, including a Bibliography). Wyman's relations with the 

 Lowell Institute, as Curator and Lecturer, are stated, with a portrait, in the 

 History of the Lowell Institute, by Miss Harriette Knight Smith, 1898, 

 p. 18. From September, 1859, to J u ty> l862 I was a pupil of Professor 

 Wyman, and acted as his unofficial assistant during the latter half of the 

 period; my recollections are very distinct; of the third year I have a Diary, 

 and I have preserved all his letters, more than thirty in number. My previous 

 tributes were published in Old and New, November, 1874, pp. 533-544, and 

 in the Popular Science Monthly, January, 1875, pp. 355-360, with a portrait. 



