176 Jeffries Wyman. 
remarkable scientific movement of his time, the revival and 
apparant prevalence of doctrines of evolution. As might be 
expected, he was neither an advocate nor an opponent. He was 
not one of those persons who quickly make up their minds, 
and announce their opinions, with a confidence inversely pro- 
ortionate to their knowledge. e could consider long, and 
old his judgment in suspense. How well he could do this 
appears from an early, and so faras I know, his only published 
presentation of the topic, in a short review of Owen's ‘‘Mono- 
graph of the Aye-Aye” (in Am. Journ. Science, Sept., 1863)— 
the paper in which Prof. Owen's acceptance of evolution, but 
not of natural selection, was promulgated. Dr. Wyman com- 
pares Owen’s view with that of Darwin (to whom he had already 
communicated interesting and novel illustrations of the play of 
natural selection); and he adds some acute remarks upon a 
rather earlier speculation of Mr. Agassiz, in which the latter 
suggests that the species of animals might have been created as 
eggs rather than as adults. He states the case between the two 
general views with perfect impartiality, and the bent of his own 
mind is barely discerni In due time he satisfied himself as 
sare 8 to repeat the substance of a conversation which I had 
with him some time after the death of the lamented Agassiz, 
and not long before his own. report the substance only, 
not the words. 
assiz repeated to me, he said, a remark made to him by 
Humboldt, to the effect that Cuvier made a great mistake, and 
missed a great opportunity, when he took the side he did in the 
famous controversy with Geoffroy St. Hilaire; he should have 
accepted the doctrines of morphology, and brought his vast 
knowledge of comparative anatomy and zoology, and his un- 
6 yer powers, to their illustration. Had he done so, instead 
of gaining by his superior knowledge some temporary an 
doubtful victories in a lost cause, his preéminence for all our 
time would have been assured and complete. I thought, con- 
tinued Wyman, that there was a parallel case before me,—that 
if Agassiz had brought his vast stores of knowledge in zoology, 
embryology, and paizontology, his genius for morphology, a2 
_Upon one point Wyman was clear from the beginning. He 
did not wait until evolutionary doctrines were about to prevail, 
