JEFFRIES WYMAN 203 



religious hope. . . . There is a moment when, if ever on earth, 

 the heart, if it opens itself, does so without disguise; it is that dread 

 moment when death approaches so near, that there is no alterna- 

 tive but to look upon this earthly life as finished, its account 

 made up, and when all that remains for the mind to dwell upon is 

 the dissolution of the body, and the realization of another life." 



Admired and trusted by his associates, by the younger naturalists 

 Wyman was absolutely adored. Ever ready with information, 

 with counsel and encouragement, so far from assuming toward 

 them the attitude of a superior, he on several occasions permitted 

 his original observations to be more or less merged within their 

 productions. His generous desire to accord all possible opportunity 

 and credit to others was early exemplified in his relations with Dr. 

 Savage in respect to the gorilla, as described on p. 189. Dr. S. 

 Weir Mitchell has records and recollections of like manifestations 

 toward himself. In the following instances the persons concerned 

 were former pupils and much younger than Wyman. His account 

 of the brain of the opossum was published as an appendix to the 

 Osteology and Myology of the same animal by Eliot Coues. 

 Edward S. Morse has a letter urging him to publish his own eluci- 

 dation of a morphologic point to which Wyman had already given 

 considerable attention; indeed, in a letter to me, dated Janu- 

 ary 15, 1872, he gives a diagram and alludes to a certain fact as a 

 " bombshell." Referring to the thesis of Norton Folsom, which 

 included an exposition of Wyman's own views upon "fore-and- 

 hind symmetry," he wrote me, May 26, 1864: "I do not know 

 exactly what ideas he brought forward, but I suppose they were 

 not unlike those we have all talked over [wholly his own]. I am 

 very glad that they are beginning to find their way into the minds of 

 young men, for the older ones will never listen to them." (The 

 italics are mine.) On the 2yth of February, 1863, while my own 

 thesis was under revision for belated publication, he wrote: "I 

 do not know that I have anything to add with regard to 'fore-and- 

 hind symmetry,' but if you find it convenient to make use of the 

 talks we have had about it, of course I should be glad to have 

 them turned to account." 



