11 



the 11th of August, 1814, at Chelmsford, a township of a 

 few hundred inhabitants in Middlesex Co., Mass., not far 

 from the present city of Lowell. As his father took up his 

 residence at the McLean Asylum in 1818, when Jeffries was 

 only four years old, he received the rudiments of his educa- 

 tion at Charlestown, in a private school; but afterwards went 

 to the Academy at Chelmsford, and, in 1826, to Phillips Ex- 

 eter Academy, where, under the instruction of Dr. Abbot, 

 he was prepared for college. He entered Harvard College 

 in 1829, the year in which Josiah Quincy took the presi- 

 dency, and was graduated in 1838, in a class of fifty-six, six 

 of whom became professors in the University. He was not 

 remarkable for general scholarship, but was fond of chemis- 

 try, and his preference for anatomical studies was already 

 developed. Some of his class-mates remember the interest 

 which was excited among them by a skeleton which he made 

 of a mammoth bull-frog from Fresh Pond, probably one 

 which is still preserved in his museum of comparative an- 

 atomy. His skill and taste in drawing, which he turned 

 to such excellent account in his investigations and in the 

 lecture room, as well as his habit of close observation of nat- 

 ural objects met with in his strolls, were manifested even in 

 boyhood. 



An attack of pneumonia during his senior year in college 

 caused much anxiety, and perhaps laid the foundation of the 

 pulmonary affection which burdened and finally shortened 

 his life. To recover from the effects of the attack, and to 

 guard against its return, he made in the winter of 1833-34 

 the first of those pilgrimages to the coast of the Southern 

 States, which in later years were so often repeated. Return- 

 ing with strength renewed in the course of the following 



