172 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 
in Paris, Poey was one of the original members who 
founded the Entomological Society of France. 
On returning to Havana in 1833, Poey gave 
himself still more fully to the study of natural his- 
tory, and greater practice gave to his drawings 
and notes more exactness and value. With the 
appearance of the successive volumes of the “ His- 
toire Naturelle des Poissons,” he attempted to iden- 
tify the fishes of his market, as well as to study 
their osteology and general anatomy. Animals 
other than fishes he also tried to study, but in 
most groups he found the literature in so scattered 
and unsatisfactory a condition that he rarely ven- 
tured to publish the results of his observations. 
Among the fishes, however, thanks to the general 
work of Cuvier and Valenciennes, and later to that 
of Dr. Gunther, he felt comparatively sure of his 
results, and ventured to name as new those which 
he could not identify. The land-snails of Cuba, 
too, Pocy and his associate, Dr. Juan Gundlach, 
were able to identify and describe with certainty, 
as all the species then known were included in the 
“Monographium Heliceorum Viventium” of Dr, 
Ludwig Pfeiffer. 
In the year 1842 Poey was appointed to the pro- 
fessorship of Comparative Anatomy and Zodlogy 
in the Royal University of Havana, which chair he 
still holds, after forty-five years. The University 
of Havana occupies an ancient monastery building 
in the heart of the city. Like most such edifices 
in Cuba and Spain, it is a low building around 
a paved court, and its whitewashed, time-stained 
walls have an air of great antiquity. The univer- 
e 
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