ZOOLOGICAL SCIENCE 215 



atomical, microscopical, and physiological aspects of zoology 

 developed mainly in relation to medicine. The laboratory 

 of the present day has come into existence in response to the 

 demands of this phase of zoological inquiry. The great 

 museum, with its staff of collectors and investigators and its 

 expeditions for the collection of material for research or for 

 public exhibition, is the modern representative of old-time 

 natural history. 



Studies in natural history were important during the cen- 

 turies of their inception, because they enabled men to appre- 

 ciate the wealth and diversity of organic nature. They were 

 also a prelude to the doctrine of evolution. At the present 

 time their continuation by our museums is particularly 

 important as a means of preserving a record of the larger 

 forms of life, which have inhabited the earth during the Age 

 of Man but which are fast approaching extinction, 28 and as a 

 means of cultivating the esthetic and recreational values of 

 biological science. The sum total of scientific work now being 

 conducted in natural history is probably greater than ever 

 before. The advent of intensive study within the laboratory 

 and the spectacular control, which laboratory workers have 

 now attained over certain biological phenomena, have caused 

 the work of the naturalist to be regarded as one among 

 many lines of study, and sometimes a dilettanti line at that. 

 The latter point of view is unfortunate in the mind of the 



the World," published in 1845, and Bates' "Naturalist on the Amazons" 

 (1863) are representative of the best in the older period. 



28 The progressive destruction of wild life, in all parts of the world that have 

 been gripped by western civilization is appalling from the standpoint of the 

 naturalist. Even game preserves like the national parks of the United States 

 are not safe from the cupidity of business enterprise. Unless there is a radical 

 change in popular feeling at an early date, the extermination of all the larger 

 mammals not capable of domestication and of many of our song birds is a 

 matter of decades rather than centuries. Perhaps when it is too late, the 

 world of living things will be far less interesting because the birds are mostly 

 English sparrows and the mammals rats and mice. But it is still believed that 

 what we of the West call progress must continue. The volume by W. T. 

 Hornaday, entitled: "Our Vanishing Wild Life," contains a statement of the 

 present situation and an appeal for its amelioration. 



