ALPHEUS HYATT, 1888-1902 143 



visiting Hawaii when death overcame him in 1902. It is very unfor- 

 tunate that he never fully wrote out the results of his studies upon 

 these shells, the manuscript which was found after his death being very 

 incomplete, especially upon specific points, and although many of his 

 descriptions of the species themselves were completed, yet his conclu- 

 sions respecting their relationships and migrations are only vaguely 

 referred to. He did, however, publish a short paper in Science in 

 1898 in which he finds that there are about 280 species of land snails 

 on the island of Oahu, with three leading genera, Bulimella, Achatinella 

 and Apex. All of these are probably descended from the recently ex- 

 tinct Achatinella phosozona of Kiliouou valley, whence they migrated 

 northward, and are now found chiefly on the western sides of the range 

 of mountains which extends along the eastern shore of the island. 



Only a very few Achatinellae crossed the broad lowlands in the middle 

 of the island, and reached the range along the western coast. Species 

 of Apex, however, crossed these lowlands and now thrive on the western 

 range, but do not live well on the seaward face of either the eastern 

 or the western range of mountains. The Bulimella? are confined to the 

 high parts of the eastern range, but have not crossed the lowlands, and 

 are not found upon the western range of mountains. Hyatt saw that 

 the Achatinellidae of the Hawaiian Islands afforded a preeminently 

 favorable opportunity for the study of the effects of physical conditions 

 on structure. He knew tbe stock from which he could trace the migra- 

 tions of the various descendent races, and he became familiar with the 

 different physical surroundings to the effects of which these races were 

 subjected. Thus he felt that he could demonstrate conclusively the 

 effects of environment upon the structure of the shells, and perhaps 

 upon the soft parts of the animals. This research would, had he com- 

 pleted it, have been his masterpiece, and would have added greatly to 

 the world's store of knowledge. 



In 1888, Hyatt published in the Proceedings of the Boston Society 

 of Natural History, his final paper upon the "Larval Theory of the 

 Origin of Cellular Tissues," in which he maintains that the metazoa 

 are descended from colonial forms of protozoa, and the metazoa may 

 be regarded as complexes of multicellular colonies in which growth by 

 sexual union and resulting fission of the ovum leads to the forma- 

 tion of three primary body layers enclosing an archenteron. Volvox or 

 Eudorina are forms intermediate between metazoa and protozoa, and 

 may be called mesozoa, being multicellular colonies composed of only 

 one layer of closely connected cells forming a primitive tissue. 



Hyatt's scientific papers and published discussions cover a wide 

 range of subjects and include such titles as the temperature of caves 

 and wells; the absence of distinct marks of glaciation in Alaska; rock 

 ruins at Niagara Falls; the chasms of the Colorado; a disintegrating 



