88 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



He was succeeded by Agassiz, who made the first announce- 

 ment of his discovery of the additional heart found in the tail 

 of the young of the salmon. 



I recall very little else about these delightful people, except 

 that they — all of them — were not only in the peerage of science, 

 but also companions as socially interesting as they were learned. 



Perhaps the most pleasant remembrance I have of all is of 

 Louis Agassiz and Joseph Henry. The former was good enough 

 to take a great interest in some of the animal physiology with 

 which I occupied the rare leisure of a hardworked young doctor. 

 His enthusiasms were shown in odd ways at times. 



On one occasion he was staying with Professor Frazier, and 

 dismissed me on the front step one slippery day in February. I 

 had got some distance from him when he came after me in haste, 

 sliding over the pavement. " I did want to say to you one thing. 

 Are you acquainted with the opossum? " I said, rather confused, 

 " No." He said, " I advise you to acquire a physiological friend- 

 ship with the opossum. He is a mine of physiological wealth." 

 (Laughter.) 



Jeffries Wyman, who was elected in 1872 and died in 1874, 

 was another who held a place in my most honoring regard. He 

 resembled Joseph Leidy in that splendid magnanimity and un- 

 selfishness which contrasted so agreeably with the disgusting 

 quarrels, happily rare, which sometimes arose among men of 

 science. 



As you have made me speak here, I am forced to say some- 

 thing of myself, and hence this anecdote of Wyman. I had 

 written him word of the discovery I had made of the chiasm of 

 the superior laryngeal nerves in the chelonia — that is to say, 

 turtles — and it greatly excited him, especially my prediction that 

 it would be found in serpents and probably in birds. A year 

 afterwards he sent me a large bundle of illustrations and de- 

 scriptions of what he had found in other classes than the turtle, 

 and insisted that I should use them in the second paper I was 

 about to print, stating that they would not have been discovered 

 had it not been for my predictive aid. Of course, I declined this 



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