19 



and dignified only when the increasing delicacy of his health, 

 to which night-exposure was prejudicial, made it unsafe for 

 him any longer to undertake its duties. The record shows 

 that he has made here one hundred and five scientific commu- 

 nications, 1 several of them very important papers, every one 

 of some positive value ; for you all know that Prof. Wyman 

 never spoke or wrote except to a direct purpose, and be- 

 cause there was something which it was worth while to 

 communicate. He bore his part also in the American Acad- 

 emy of Arts and Sciences, of which he was a Fellow from the 

 year 1843, and for many years a Councillor. To it he made 

 a good, number of communications ; among them one of the 

 longest and ablest of his memoirs. 



Then he was from the first a member of the Faculty of the 

 Museum of Comparative Zoology, where his services and his 

 advice were highly valued. He was chosen President of the 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science for 

 the year 1857, but did not assume the duties of the office. 



Some notice — brief and cursory though it must be— of 

 such portion of Dr. Wyman's scientific work as is recorded 

 in his published papers, should form a part of this account of 

 his life. 



His earliest publication, so far as we know, was an article 

 in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, in 1837, signed 

 only with the initials of his name. It is upon " The indis- 

 tinctness of images formed from oblique rays of light," and 

 the cause of it. The handling of the subject is as character- 

 istic as that of any later paper. In January, 1841, we find 

 his first recorded communication to this Society, " On the 



1 The Royal Society's Catalogue of Scientific Papers enumerates sixty-four by 

 Prof. Wyman alone, and four in conjunction with others. 



