JEFFRIES WYMAN. 389 



Selecting now for further comment only some of the more 

 noticeable contributions to science, we should not pass by his 

 investigations of the anatomy of the blind fish of the Mam- 

 moth Cave. The series began in that prolific year, 1843, with 

 a paper published in Silliman's Journal, and closed with an 

 article in the same Journal in 1854. Although Dr. Fell- 

 kamph had preceded him in ascertaining the existence of ru- 

 dimentary eyes and the special development of the fifth pair 

 of nerves, yet for the whole details of the subject, and the 

 minute anatomy, we are indebted to Professor Wyman. Many 

 of the details, however, as well as the admirable drawings 

 illustrating them, remained unpublished until 1872, when he 

 placed them at Mr. Putnam's disposal, and they were brought 

 out in his elaborate article in the "American Naturalist." 

 Here the extraordinary development of tactile sense, taking 

 the place of vision, and perfectly adapting the animal to its 

 subterranean life, is completely demonstrated. 



If Professor Wyman's first piece of anatomical work was 

 the preparation of a skeleton of a bull-frog, in his under- 

 graduate days, his most elaborate memoir is that on the 

 anatomy of the nervous system of the same animal (Rana 

 pipiensj, published in the " Smithsonian Contributions," in 

 1852. 



Anything like an analysis of this capital investigation and 

 exposition would much overpass our limits. For, although 

 the special task he assigns to himself is the description of the 

 nervous system of a single Batrachian, chiefly of its peripheral 

 portion, and of the changes undergone during metamorphosis, 

 he is led on to the consideration of several abstruse or contro- 

 verted questions ; — such, for instance, as the attempts that 

 have been made to homologize the nervous system of Articu- 

 lates with that of Vertebrates, upon which he has some acute 

 criticism ; — the theories that have been propounded respect- 

 ing the functions of the cerebellum and its relation to locomo- 

 tion, which he tests in a characteristic way by a direct appeal 

 to facts ; — the supposition of Cuvier that the special enlarge- 

 ments of the spinal cord are in proportion to the force of the 

 respective limbs supplied therefrom ; which he controverts 



