Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/372

358 the usual order of Nature, as it is revealed to human minds, or, on the other hand, that each species became such by progressive development or transmutation; that, as in the individual, so in the aggregate of races, the simple forms were not only the precursors, but the progenitors of the complex ones, and that thus the order of Nature, as commonly manifest in her works, was maintained."

No one can help seeing that he inclined toward belief in the general doctrine, but he neither indorses "Darwinism" nor denounces those who find themselves unable to accept "derivation" in any sense.

Regarding the appearance of organisms de novo, he never allowed himself to express a final opinion. He published two papers embodying the results of numerous and accurate experiments, and, we have reason to know, was still continuing his observations at the time of his death.

The general question to which Prof. Wyman gave most attention, until called from it by the Archæological Museum, was that of Organic Symmetry, especially as manifested in the limbs. Accepting the usual belief in an homology of the front and hind limbs, he associated therewith the idea first put forth by Oken, that the two ends of the body are symmetrical, or reversed repetitions of each other, as are the right and left sides. The application of this doctrine to the limbs makes the ulna the homologue of the tibia, the radius of the fibula, and the thumb of the little-toe, instead of the great-toe, as ordinarily believed.

So radically does this interpretation of "intermembral homologies" differ from that of most anatomists, that it is not strange that its acceptance is, at present, confined to a very few (Foltz, in France, and, in this country, Dana, Cones, Folsom, and the writer). But we are encouraged by the reflection that our leader never gave even a qualified assent to any doctrine which did not prove to be in the main correct.

Upon no other single problem did he bestow so much thought. And, as may be inferred, it is in his treatment of this question that his peculiar characteristics appear. In the adoption of new ideas he manifested a wise caution, which, contrasted with the haste of others less well informed, illustrates the maxim, "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." We recall his freedom in discussion with his students and his kindness in aiding their advancement, even to his own apparent detriment; his modesty, occasioning a lack of reference to his own papers or to unpublished investigations; his critical acumen, which was the more searching and useful from its entire freedom from personality; and, finally, here shine forth in their greatest brilliancy those rare qualities which enabled him, when occasion required, to overlook the delusive charms of teleology, though upheld by popular interest and theological authority, and to regard her plainer but more