1874.] 123 [Gray. 



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 discernable. In due time he satisfied 

 himself as to which of them was the more probable, or, in 

 any case, the more fertile hypothesis. As to this, I may ven- 

 ture to take the liberty to repeat the substance of a conversa- 

 tion which I had with him sometime after the death of the 

 lamented Agassiz, and not long before his own. I report the 

 substance only, not the words. 



Agassiz 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 zo- 

 ology, and his unequalled powers, to their illustration. Had 

 he done so, instead of gaining by his superior knowledge 

 some temporary and doubtful victories in a lost cause, his 

 preeminence for all our time would have been assured and 

 complete. I thought, continued Wyman, that there was a 

 parallel case before me, — that if Agassiz had brought his 

 vast stores of knowledge in zoology, embryology, and palae- 

 ontology, his genius for morphology, and all his quickness 

 of apprehension and fertility in illustration, to the elucidation 

 and support of the doctrine of the progressive development 

 of species, science in our day would have gained much, some 

 grave misunderstandings been earlier rectified, and the per- 

 manent fame of Agassiz been placed on a broader and higher 

 basis even than it is now. 



Upon one point Wyman was clear from the beginning. 

 He did not wait until evolutionary doctrines were about to 



