Page:Biographical Memoir of Samuel George Morton - George Bacon Wood.djvu/19

15 the title of "Crania Egyptiaca, or Observations on Egyptian Ethnography," with handsomely executed drawings of numerous skulls derived from the pyramid of Saccara, the necropolis of Memphis, the catacombs of Thebes, and other depositories of the ancient dead in that region of tombs.

In January, 1845, Dr. Morton was elected a Fellow of this College. That we did not more frequently see him among us, was probably owing to the unfortunate coincidence, at that time existing, of the meetings of the College and Academy, which would have rendered necessary a neglect of his official duties in the latter institution, had he attended at the sittings of the former. It may be proper here to mention, though not in strict chronological order, that, by the appointment of the College, he prepared a brief biographical sketch of Dr. George McClellan, which was read in September, 1849, and published in the Transactions of that date.

In the years 1846 and 1847, he prepared essays "On the Ethnography and Archæology of the American Aborigines," and "On the Hybridity of Animals and Plants in reference to the unity of the human species," which were read before the Academy, and afterwards published in the American Journal of Science and Arts (III., 2d ser., A. D. 1847). In these papers he advanced opinions upon the origin of the human family, which led to an unfortunate controversy, that, with his delicacy of feeling, could not but have in some measure disturbed the tranquillity of the latter years of his life. It is due to Dr. Morton to say, that he did not consider the views advocated by himself as conflicting with the testimony of Scripture, or in any degree tending to invalidate the truths of revealed religion.

During the year 1848, much of his time was devoted to the preparation of an elementary work on "Human Anatomy, Special, General, and Microscopic," illustrated by a great number of figures, and aiming to be an exposition of the science in its present improved state. Among his inducements to this work, not the least, as he states in the preface, was the desire to be enrolled among the expositors of a science that had occupied many of the best years of his life. Though laying no claim to originality in its facts or illustrations, the treatise cost him a great deal of labor, not only in the arrangement of the matter, the care of the engravings, and the superintendence of the press, but also in the