Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/455

 sophical Transactions’ (No. 144). In the same publication he gave dissections of lumbricus latus—the tapeworm (No. 146), and lumbricus teres, now known as ascaris lumbricoides (No. 147); and of lumbricus hydropicus (No. 193) or hydatid, which he successfully shows to be an animal and not a mere morbid growth; and of the Tajacu, or Mexico musk-hog. He published the first thorough dissection of the female Virginian opossum, which he calls ‘Carigueya seu Marsupiale Americanum,’ in 1698; and in 1699 ‘Orang Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris, or the Anatomy of a Pygmy.’ The ape was a chimpanzee from Africa, and not a true orang-outang. A second edition appeared in 1751. The dissection is carefully and clearly described, and is followed by an essay of much learning on the pigmies of the ancients, which, with their cynocephali, satyrs, and sphinges, he believes to have been apes. The book has excellent plates, and is dedicated to the Lord-chancellor John Somers [q. v.] He translated in 1681 Swammerdam's admirable ‘Ephemeri Vita,’ and in the preface urges naturalists to study the British ephemeridæ. In Willughby's ‘Historia Piscium,’ 1686, he wrote the anatomy of an embryo shark and of the lumpus Anglorum; and in Plot's ‘Natural History of Oxfordshire’ (p. 305) he wrote on the scent-bags of polecats. In ‘Phocæna’ he makes some excellent suggestions for a general English natural history. His general learning was considerable, and he published in 1669 ‘A Philosophical Essay concerning the Rhymes of the Ancients.’ He was not a ‘signetur man,’ but took the part of the apothecaries in the dispensary controversy; and Sir Samuel Garth [q. v.], who calls him ‘Carus,’ has satirised his deliberate way of speaking and his taste for Swiss philosophy, Danish poetry, and every kind of old books, Refuse of fairs and gleanings of Duck Lane. Tyson died on 1 Aug. 1708, and was buried in St. Dionis Backchurch, and since the demolition in recent years of that church his monument has been moved to All Hallows, Lombard Street. Elkanah Settle published a funeral poem, ‘Threnodium Apollinare,’ in his memory, of ten pages of heroic verse. The Barber-Surgeons had his portrait painted, and it hung in their parlour (, Annals of the Barber-Surgeons) till 1746, when they sold it for ten guineas to his relative, Luke Maurice. It is probably the portrait now in the College of Physicians, given in 1764 by his great-nephew, Dr. Richard Tyson (1730–1784) [q. v.]

[Works; Munk's Coll. of Phys. i. 426; Foster's Alumni Oxon.]  TYSON, MICHAEL (1740–1780), antiquary and artist, born in the parish of Stamford All Saints on 19 Nov. 1740, was the only child of Michael Tyson (d. 22 Feb. 1794, aged 83), dean of Stamford and archdeacon of Huntingdon, by his first wife, Miss Curtis of Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire. He was entered at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 1759, became a scholar of the college, and studied Greek under the Rev. John Cowper, brother of William Cowper, the poet. He graduated B.A. in 1764, M.A. in 1767, and B.D. in 1775, and in 1767 was elected to a fellowship at his college.

In the autumn of 1766 Tyson accompanied Richard Gough [q. v.] in a tour, of which he kept an exact journal, through the north of England and Scotland; during the journey he was made a burgess of Glasgow (12 Sept. 1766) and of Inverary (17 Sept.) He returned to residence at college, and devoted himself to etching and botany. Gough, however, in some verses on his friend, calls him ‘idlest of men on old Camus banks.’ With Israel Lyons the younger he made frequent peregrinations in search of rare plants around Cambridge, and often consulted Gray on botanical points. The account of Gray's knowledge of natural history in Mason's life of the poet (p. 402) was by him. He was elected F.S.A. on 2 June 1768, and F.R.S. on 11 Feb. 1779. On 17 March 1769 he made himself conspicuous at Cambridge as a zealous whig by voting with John Jebb in a minority of two against the tory address to George III (, Annals of Cambridge, iv. 354).

Tyson was ordained deacon by Bishop Green at Whitehall chapel on 11 March 1770, and until 1772 was minister of Sawston, Cambridgeshire. For a time he was dean of his college, and he was bursar about 1774 when he succeeded to the cure of St. Benedict's Church in Cambridge. In 1776 Tyson became Whitehall preacher. In the same year he and the Rev. Thomas Kerrich made a catalogue of the prints in the university library at Cambridge.

In March 1778 Tyson was inducted, after a long legal dispute as to the right of patronage which was exercised by Corpus Christi College, to the rectory of Lambourne near Ongar in Essex, and on 4 July he was married at St. Benedict's Church, Cambridge, to Margaret, daughter of Hitch Wale of Shelford in Cambridgeshire. Tyson died at Lambourne on 4 May 1780 from a violent fever, which carried him off within a week, and was buried on 10 May outside the communion rails, but there is no memorial of him in the church. He left one son, Michael Curtis Tyson (1779–1794), who inherited