PRESENT PROBLEMS OF PALEONTOLOGY. 227 



appearing to solve some of the most important problems of descent. 

 Then the stage shifted to South America, where an equally surprising 

 revelation of unthought of life was made. We were in the very midst 

 of the more thorough examination of this Patagonian and Pampsean 

 world when the scene of new discovery suddenly changed to North 

 Africa — previously the ' dark continent ' of paleontology — and again 

 a complete series of surprises was forthcoming. Each continent has 

 solved its quota of problems and has aroused its quota of new ones. 

 Now we look to central and South Africa, to the practically unknown 

 eastern Asia, and possibly to a portion of the half sunken continent of 

 Antarctica for a future stock of answers and new queries. 



Eapid exploration and discovery, however, are not the only symp- 

 toms of health in a science; we do not aim to pass down to history as 

 great collectors; we must accumulate conceptions and ideas as rapidly 

 a? we accumulate materials; it will be a reproach to our generation 

 if we do not advance as far beyond the intellectual status of Cuvier, 

 Owen, Huxley and Cope as we advance beyond their material status in 

 the way of collections of fossils. We must thoroughly understand 

 where we are in the science, how we are doing our thinking, what we are 

 aiming to accomplish; we must grasp, as the political leader, Tilden, 

 observed, the most important things and do them first. 



Paleontology a Branch of Biology. 



Let us first cut away any remaining brushwood of misconception 

 as to the position of paleontology among the sciences. I do not wish 

 to quarrel with my superior officers, but I must first record a protest 

 against the fact that in the classification scheme of this congress, in the 

 year of our Lord 1904, paleontology is bracketed as a division of 

 geology. It is chiefly an accident of birth which has connected paleon- 

 tology with geology; because fossils were first found in the rocks, 

 geology the foster mother was mistaken for the true mother, zoology 

 — a confusion in the birth records which Huxley did his best to correct. 

 The preservation of extinct animals and plants in the rocks is one of the 

 fortunate accidents of time, but to mistake this position as indicative of 

 scientific affinity is about as logical as it would be to bracket the 

 Protozoa, which are principally aquatic organisms, under hydrology, 

 or the Insecta, because of their aerial life, under meteorology. No, this 

 is emphatically a misconception which is still working harm in some 

 museums and institutions of learning. Paleontology is not geology, \ 

 it is zoology ; it succeeds only in so far as it is pursued in the zoological j 

 and biological spirit. 



In order to make clear the special role of paleontology among the 

 biological sciences and at the same time the grateful services which 

 it is enabled to render to its foster science, geology, as well as to geog- 



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