Thayer

THAYER, ABBOTT HANDERSON (1849- ), American artist, was born at Boston, Massachusetts, on the i2th of August 1849. He was a pupil of J. L. Ger&me at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, and became a member of the Society of American Artists (1879), of the National Academy of Design (1901), and of the Royal Academy of San Luca, Rome. As a painter of portraits, landscapes, animals and the ideal figure, he won high rank among American artists. Among his bestknown pictures are, " Virgin Enthroned," " Caritas," " In Memoriam, Robert Louis Stevenson," and " Portrait of a Young Woman "; and he did some decorative work for the Walker Art Building, Bowdoin College, Maine. Thayer is also well known as a naturalist. He developed a theory of " protective coloration " in animals (see COLOURS CF ANIMALS), which has attracted considerable attention among naturalists. According to this theory, " animals are painted by nature darkest on those parts which tend to be most lighted by the sky's light, and vice versa "; and the earth-brown of the upper parts, bathed in sky-light, equals the skylight colour of the belly, bathed in earth-yellow and shadow.

See his article, " The Law which underlies Protective Coloration," in the Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1897 (Washington, 1898); and Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom (New York, 1910), a summary of his discoveries, by his son, Gerald H. Thayer. THAYER, JAMES BRADLEY (1831-1002), American legal writer and educationist, was born at Haverhill, Massachusetts, on the isth of January 1831. He graduated at Harvard College in 1852, and at the Harvard Law School m 1856, in which year he was admitted to the bar of Suffolk county and began to practise in Boston. In 1873-83 he was Royall professor of law at Harvard; in 1883 he was transferred to the professorship which after 1893 was known as the Weld professorship and which he held until his death on the I4th of February 1902. He took an especial interest in the historical evolution of law.

He wrote: The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law (1893); Cases on Evidence (1892); Cases on Constitutional Law (1895); The Development of Trial by Jury (1896); A Preliminary Treatise on Evidence at the Common Law (1898), and a short life of John Marshall (IQOI); and edited the twelfth edition of Kent's Commentaries and the Letters of Chauncey Wright (1877), and A Westward Journey with Mr Emerson (1884). THAYER, JOSEPH HENRY (1828-1901), American biblical scholar, was born at Boston on the 7th of November 1828. He studied at the Boston Latin School, and graduated at Harvard in 1850. Subsequently he studied theology at the Harvard Divinity School, and graduated at Andover Theological Seminary in 1857. He preached in Quincy, and in 1859-64 in Salem, Massachusetts, and in 1862-63 was chaplain of the 4oth Massachusetts Volunteers. He was professor of sacred literature in Andover Seminary in 1864-82, and in 1884 succeeded Ezra Abbot as Bussey professor of New Testament criticism in the Harvard Divinity School. He died on the 26th of November 1901, soon after his resignation from the Bussey professorship.

He was a member of the American Bible Revision Committee and recording secretary of the New Testament company. His chief works were his translation of Grimm's Clams Novi Teslamenli (1887; revised 1889) as A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, and his New Testament bibliography (1890).