Kansas University Science Beletin. 



Vol. IV, No. 7. SEPTEMBER, 1908. | voux^iv.X'^ ?: 



CYTOLOGY AND TAXONOMY. 



BY C. E. McCLUNG.* 

 (Contribution from the Zoological Laboratory, No. 174.) 



rF"*HERE are certain large problems in the domain of biology 

 I that confronted the earliest investigators, and these have 

 been handed down from one generation of scientists to 

 another. As new and more restricted departments separated 

 themselves from the older and more general ones they carried 

 with them these same problems, toward the solution of which 

 they applied their own special methods, giving them at the 

 same time something of their own bias. Very prominent 

 among these great questions, and, in a measure, at least, em- 

 bracing them all, are those which concern the relation of or- 

 ganisms to each other, and the processes of development in the 

 individual organism. 



To the youngest of the biological sciences have descended 

 these heritages of the scientific ages, and now we hear it from 

 many sources that all biological problems are to-day problems 

 of the cell. Clearly enough it has been recognized that cytology 

 might have much to say regarding the mechanism of onto- 

 genetic growth, but less definitely, and only more recently, has 

 a conception of what it might do for phylogeny arisen in the 

 minds of biologists. It was with the thought of these two 

 functions of cytology in mind that I chose the somewhat in- 

 definite title for this paper. I cannot but believe that cytology 

 will honorably fulfil the obligations that science has placed 

 upon it, and I feel that it is indeed a privilege to stand before 

 you and call to your attention what our young department has 

 already been able to accomplish, and to suggest possibilities 

 for further usefulness. 



* An address delivered before the section on Cytology and Heredity of the Seventh Interna- 

 tional Zoological Congress, at Boston, August 20, 1907. 



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