228 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



raphy, when pursued in a purely biological spirit, let us employ an 

 imaginary problem. Figure to yourselves a continent absolutely un- 

 known in any of its physical features of earth, climate or configuration; 

 let us imagine that from such an unknown continent all the animals 

 and all the plants could be brought into a vast museum, the only con- 

 dition being that the latitude and longitude of each specimen should 

 be precisely recorded, and let us further imagine a vast number of in- 

 vestigators of the most thorough zoological and botanical training and 

 with a due share of scientific imagination, set to work on this collec- 

 tion. Such an army of investigators would soon begin to restore the 

 geography of this unknown continent, its fresh, brackish and salt-water 

 confines, its seas, rivers and lakes, its snow peaks, its glaciers, its forests, 

 uplands, plains, meadows and swamps; also even the cosmic relations 

 of this unknown continent, the amount and duration of sunshine as 

 well as something of the chemical constitution of the atmosphere and of 

 the rivers and seas. Such a restoration or series of restorations would 

 be possible only because of the wonderful fitness or adaptation of plants 

 and animals to their environment, for it is not too much to say that 

 they mirror their environment. 



At the historic period commemorated by this great exposition 

 of St. Louis when Napoleon concluded to sell half a continent 

 to strengthen his armies, it is true that such a solution of a physical 

 jDroblem by biological analysis might have been conceived by 

 the pupils of Buffon, by Napoleon's great contemporaries Cuvier, 

 Lamarck or St. Hilaire, but the solution itself would not have been 

 possible. It has been rendered possible only by the wonderful advance 

 in the understanding of the adaptation of the living to the lifeless forces 

 of the planet. Finally, it is obvious in such a projection of the physical 

 from the purely biological that the degree of accuracy reached will 

 represent the present state of the science and the extent of its approach 

 toward the final goal of being an exact or complete science. The 

 illustrative figure need not be changed when the words paleozoology 

 and paleobotany are substituted for zoology and botany. We still read 

 with equal clearness the physical or environmental changes of past 

 times in the biological mirror, a mirror often unburnished and incom- 

 plete, owing to the interruptions in the paleontological records, but con- 

 stantly becoming more polished as our knowledge of life and its all 

 pervading relations to the non-life becomes more extensive and more 

 profound. 



Such an achievement as the reconstruction of a continent would be 

 impossible in paleontology pursued as geology or as a logical subdivision 

 of geology. The importance of the services which paleontology may 

 render geology as time-keeper of the rocks, or which geology may render 

 paleontology, are so familiar that we need not stop to enumerate them. 

 Te emphasize the relation I have elsewhere suggested the phrase, Non 



