rattlesnakes had
not been allowed to vote on the question of seceding.

As I write I pause to turn over these records of a dearly-valued
friendship. They begin years ago with words of encouragement as to
certain investigations in which both of us felt interest. Here and
there they touch on matters of social or personal value, but for the
most part they deal only with science. I used to wonder in those days,
and still am surprised anew as again I turn over these letters, at the
amount of what I might call suggestiveness in Wyman. He replies, for
example, in one letter to the gift of a scientific essay, and then in
a postscript runs off over eight pages of comment, explanation and
novel suggestions which put the subject in a new light; while every
here and there, amidst the wealth of scientific illustration and
useful hints given to aid another's work, there is some pause to
express a courteous doubt of his own opinions. Everywhere, indeed, his
letters, which made the most of our intercourse, were full of the
broadest sympathy in pursuits which often were--but often were not--in
the same direction as his own lifelong studies. At times, too, the
sympathy broke out into the extreme of generosity. Thus, having
learned from me that certain very important and hitherto undescribed
anatomical structures would probably be found in serpents and frogs,
he tells me soon after that he has found them; also, that he has
discovered them in birds, and that he has been led finally to a series
of unlooked-for discoveries in the anatomy of the nerves of the frog;
and he wishes experiments made on living frogs to learn the
physiological use of the structures thus found. Then not long after he
proposes that as the first discovery came from this writer, he should
take and use the notes and drawings which recorded his own researches,
and should use them in a second paper. It is needless to say that this
was declined, and the results appeared under Wyman's name. It was
characteristic of the man, and was not the only time when I had to
thank him for the kindest offers of aid.

To see Dr. Wyman in his museum was one of the most pleasant
exhibitions of the man at his best. I well remember one Sunday
afternoon in May three years ago, when, walking in Cambridge with
H----, one of the most prominent of our great railway presidents--and,
better than this, a man notable for genial social qualities, high
culture and a broad range of the readiest sympa