196 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



"Anatomists who have compared the fore and hind limbs of 

 men and animals have mostly described them as if they were 

 parallel repetitions of each other, just as are any two ribs on the 

 same side of the body. By a few they have been studied as sym- 

 metrical parts, repeating each other in a reversed manner from 

 before backwards, as right and left parts do from side to side. 

 We have adopted this last mode of viewing them, because, though 

 open to grave objections, as will be seen further on, the difficulties 

 met with are, on the whole, fewer than in the other, and because, 

 too, it is supported by the indications of fore-and-hind symmetry 

 in other parts of the body." 1 



Those who have adopted his view, and who hope, in time, to 

 show that fore-and-hind symmetry is a fundamental law of verte- 

 brate organization, are encouraged by the reflection that their 

 leader seldom gave even a qualified assent to any doctrine which 

 did not prove in the main correct. 



For some reason Wyman devoted comparatively little attention 

 to neurology. Under date of July 25, 1864, he wrote: 



"I shall try to work in a direction in which I have hitherto done 

 but little, viz., the nervous system." 



The papers on the brains of the frog (1852) and opossum (1869), 

 while admirable and suggestive so far as they go, fall short of 

 what might have been expected. The former, indeed, contains 

 what is, so far as I know, the sole instance, in all his writings, of 

 a serious misapprehension, viz., as to the developmental and mor- 

 phologic significance of the fusion of the right and left olfactory 

 bulbs in the frog. 



It fell to Wyman to report upon the brains of two notable men, 

 Daniel Webster (1853), and Louis Agassiz (1873). To them he 

 refers in the last letter received from him, dated June 17, 1874, 

 less than three months before his own death. He says: 



" Agassiz' brain weighed 1,495 grams, Webster's 1,500 and a 

 trifle more. Practically the two were alike as far as absolute weight 



1 The writer has a sheet of paper upon which, on Christmas Day, 1861, 

 Wyman made five hasty but most graphic and suggestive sketches of the ideal 

 vertebrate, with its viscera and limbs symmetrically arranged with reference 

 to a central neutral point. 



