242 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION 



fishes, together with such insects, inollusks, and plants as may be 

 found to have special bearing on the work. It is hardly necessary 

 to add that extensive publications would undoubtedly result from 

 the elaboration of the collections. 



As to the length of time required for this work, it is difficult to 

 make any close estimate. If carried out on the scale here proposed, 

 the field explorations would probably be fairly complete in ten years. 



2. Reaso?is Why it SJwidd Be Undcrtakeri by the Carnegie Institu- 

 tion. — For generations zoologists and botanists have been working 

 piecemeal at these problems, and have expended a vast amount of 

 labor and learning, yet it is a deplorable fact that no adequate 

 results have been achieved. It would carry us too far were we 

 to discuss the reasons why the Old World workers have been un- 

 able to gather the necessary material and work it up in a harmon- 

 ious, comprehensive manner, so as to make the results available to 

 others for purposes of coordination and generalization. They are 

 of a historical, political, and financial nature. In the meantime 

 our own countrymen have advanced so far in these particular re- 

 spects — thanks to well planned, well executed, and comprehensive 

 work by the U. S. Biological Survey — that the inaccessibility of the 

 corresponding facts relating to the fauna and flora of the Old World 

 has become a formidable obstacle to our own progress. 



Unfortunatel}^ the conditions which in the Old World have con- 

 tributed to bring about this situation are permanent, so that no 

 relief can be hoped for from that direction. Moreover, no Old 

 World museum, university, or academy could undertake the work, 

 even if so inclined and with the money, because it would be practi- 

 cally impossible for them to duplicate the work already so thoroughly 

 done on this hemisphere. If done at all, the work must be under- 

 taken from this side. We are already far ahead in the survey of our 

 field, and the Old World material must be gathered by us, with our 

 methods to make it comparable, worked up bj^ our scientists to insure 

 its uniform elaboration, and deposited in our institutions to accomplish 

 a really valuable correlation ; but thus far we have labored under 

 the same difficulties as the Old World biologists. No institution 

 in our country has been so situated scientifically and financially that 

 it could think of realizing so comprehensive a scheme ; nor can the 

 Government be expected to extend its activities into this field on a 

 scale which would promise results within a measurable future. 



Other problems, such as the investigation of the more truly 

 American fauna and flora to the south of us, as well as the biolog- 



