No. 794] BERTRAM GARNER SMITH 581 



j\Ieclical College and professor of anatomy from 1930 

 until his retirement in September 1942. 



Over the years 1906-1929, Smith's scientific work was 

 chiefly done on amphibians. Of his 49 published papers, 

 22 were on members of this group, and 13 of these dealt 

 with the giant salamander, CryptobrancJnts alleghenien- 

 sis. His interest in this dates from boyhood, when, fish- 

 ing in the stream near his home, he would frequently 

 catch a Cryptobranchus instead of a fish. Thus, when 

 he learned of the importance of this animal from a zoo- 

 logical point of view, he knew where to find it. The 

 breeding season and habits of this amiDhibian, sought for 

 almost a generation, were a mystery until it was discov- 

 ered that, unlike other amphibians, it breeds not in the 

 spring but in the fall. Smith studied its habits and 

 found how oviposition and fertilization are effected. His 

 field observations ranged from 1905-1911, and his labora- 

 tory work from 1906-1929. 



The difficulties of the field work of collecting and "fix- 

 ing" the egg and life histoiy stages were great. But 

 quite as great were those of the laboratory work of em- 

 bedding and sectioning these yolk-laden amphibian eggs 

 averaging 6.2 mm. in diameter and exceeded in size only 

 by those of C. japonicus (c. 7 mm. in diameter). Smith 

 was a good artist and his papers are illustrated by his 

 own drawings and photographs. The work on his 

 articles, from start to finish, was done with his own hands. 

 Unlike many researchers, he never had the help of assis- 

 tants. 



Smith's thirteen papers on the natural history and em- 

 bryology of Cryptobranchus (published mainly in the 

 Biological Bulletin and Journal of Morphology), range 

 in date from 1906-1929. They comprise 484 pages and 

 590 drawings and photographs. Even a general exami- 

 nation of his papers on Cryptobranchus reveals what a 

 prodigious amount of meticulous histological work he did 

 on the development stages of these huge eggs and early 

 embrvos. I do not recall anv vertebrate whose natural 



