386 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



this society, the anatomical part by Professor Wyman. Two 

 other papers of that early year, on the anatomy of two Mol- 

 lusca, Tebennophorus Carolinensis and Glandina truncata, 

 published in the fourth volume of the society's Journal, each 

 with a copper plate, are noteworthy, as showing that he pos- 

 sessed from the first that happy faculty of clear, terse, and 

 closely relevant exposition, and that skill and neatness of illus- 

 tration with his pencil, which characterize all his work, both 

 of research and instruction. 



Another paper of that year, " On the microscopic structure 

 of the teeth of the Lepidostei, and their analogies with those 

 of the Labyrinthodonts" read to this society in August, and 

 published in Silliman's Journal in October, 1843, was impor- 

 tant and timely. In it he demonstrated that the Labyrinthine 

 structure of the teeth, considered at the time to be peculiar to 

 certain sauroid reptiles, equally belong to gar-fishes, and con- 

 sequently that many fossil teeth which had been referred by 

 the evidence of this character alone to a group of reptiles 

 founded upon this peculiarity, might as well belong to ancient 

 sauroid fishes. 



Although not of any importance now to remember, I may 

 here mention his report to this society on the Hydrachos 

 Sillimani of Koch, a factitious Saurian of huge length, suc- 

 cessfully exhibited in New York and elsewhere under high 

 auspices, and I think also in Germany, but which Dr. Wyman 

 exposed at sight, showing that it was made up of an indefinite 

 number of various cetaceous vertebrae, belonging to many in- 

 dividuals, which (as was afterward ascertained) were collected 

 from several localities. 



But the memoir by which Professor Wyman assured his 

 position among the higher comparative anatomists was that 

 communicated to and published by this society in the summer 

 of 1847, in which the Gorilla was first named and introduced 

 to the scientific world, and the distinctive structure and affini- 

 ties of the animal so thoroughly made out from the study of 

 the skeleton, that there was, as the great English anatomist 

 remarked, " very little left to add, and nothing to correct." 

 In this memoir the " Description of the habits of Troglodytes 



