Jump to content

Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/369

From Wikisource
This page has been validated.
SKETCH OF DR. JEFFRIES WYMAN.
355

a branching tree. These buds, no doubt, make you think of something you have seen before—the yeast-babies—yes, these are the baby-hydræ. Soon their fingers begin to grow; then they loosen themselves from the old mother hydra, and begin to "fish for themselves." The next time yon go wading, you must try and capture some of these

Fig. 42.—Old Hydra and Young Ones.

wonderful little creatures, and see if you can find all that I have described without my help. You are now, I trust, opening your eyes to the great world of living things all around you, in which you have lived and played, as I lived and played—blindfolded. And, when once your eyes are really open, wide, there is no telling what wonders they may behold.

SKETCH OF DR. JEFFRIES WYMAN.

By BURT G. WILDER,

PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY IN CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

WITHIN a year, science has lost two of her greatest leaders, Louis Agassiz and Jeffries Wyman. With the life, the works, and the appearance of the one, all are familiar. But the other was hardly known outside of strictly scientific circles. He rarely gave popular lectures, and never wrote any thing that attracted general attention. Yet his influence upon the progress of science in this country has been very great, and he had for years been regarded by all as the highest anatomical authority in America, and the compeer of Owen, Huxley, and Gegenbauer, in the Old World.

Jeffries Wyman was born at Chelmsford, near Lowell, Massachusetts, August 11, 1814. His father was a physician, as is his surviv-