CORRESPONDENCE AND INFORMATION 



7i 



WHERE THE CARS SANK IN A SWAMP. 



At the time these pictures were taken 

 the work had progressed until only a 

 space five hundred or six hundred feet 

 in width remained to be filled. The 

 spreading of the mass below caused 

 the crust, which was several feet thick, 

 to rise above the common level of the 

 swamp thus exposing the edge and 

 revealing the nature of the soil which 

 was composed almost wholly of vege- 

 table matter, and contained trees 

 several inches in thickness, but so com- 

 pletely decomposed as to crumble to 

 pieces when handled. I secured several 



specimens from various depths below 

 the surface. 



There is little doubt that Pymatun- 

 ing Swamp was once an extensive 

 body of water, which has become filled 

 with silt and the surface grown over, 

 for it is perfectly level. Trees are 

 numerous around its edges, but near 

 the center these give way to shrubs, 

 grasses, reeds and rushes. A sluggish 

 stream winds through it and forms the 

 head waters of the Big Shenango, a 

 branch of the Beaver River. 



Milo H. Miller. 



Nature for Her Own Sake. 



These men of the old school were 

 lovers of nature. They knew nature 

 as a whole, rather than as a fragment 

 or a succession of fragments. They 

 were not made in Germany or any- 

 where else and their work was done 

 because they loved it, because the im- 

 pulse within would not let them do 

 otherwise than work, and their train- 

 ing, partly their own, partly responsi- 

 ble to their source of inspiration, was 

 made to fit their own purposes. If 

 these men went to Germany as many 

 of them did, it was for inspiration, not 

 for direction ; not to sit through lec- 

 tures, not to dig in some far-off corner 

 of knowledge, not to stand through a 

 doctor's examination in a dress coat 

 with a major and two minors, not tc 

 be encouraged magna cum laude to un- 



dertake a scientific career. The career 

 was fixed by heredity and early envi- 

 ronment. Nothing could head them off 

 and they took orders from no one as 

 to what they should, or what they 

 should not reach as conclusions. They 

 did not work for a career — many of 

 them found none — but for the love 

 of the work. They were filled with a 

 rampant, exurberant individuality which 

 took them wherever they pleased to 

 go. They followed no set fashions in 

 biology. Such methods as they had 

 were their own, w r rought out by their 

 own strength. They were dependent 

 on neither libraries nor equipment 

 though they struggled for both. Not 

 facilities for work, but endeavor to 

 work, if need be without facilities, gave 

 them strength and their strength was 

 the strength of ten. — David Starr Jor- 

 dan in Science. 



