Moreno of Marsh and Ameghino of himself. The comparison was un- 

 fair to Leidy, who would never have been guilty of Burmeister's per- 

 formances, but the old German was dead at the time of my visit and 

 enters my story in a very subordinate way. 



Between Moreno and Ameghino there was an internecine quarrel, 

 a situation much like the Owen-Huxley, Marsh-Cope feuds, plus the 

 fiery temperament of "us Latins." Seiior Doctor Don Francisco Moreno 

 was a wealthy man, who was the founder and first director of the La 

 Plata Museum. As assistant director, he called Florentine Ameghino 

 from Cordoba, where he had been a professor in the university and 

 had already gained considerable reputation by his palaeontological 

 work. Very soon the two incompatibles quarrelled violently and intense 

 bitterness of feeling resulted. Ameghino was forced to resign his posi- 

 tion in the Museum and deprived of his means of liveUhood, while a 

 Swiss surveyor, Mercerat, was imported as palaeontologist. Refusing to 

 be driven out of the field, Ameghino, with splendid pluck, opened a 

 stationery shop. He and his wife lived like hermits in a corner of his 

 large house, all the rest of which was given up to his shop and his col- 

 lections. Every penny that he could scrape up was devoted to keeping 

 his brother Carlos at work collecting fossils in Patagonia and to the 

 publication of his papers. In the history of science, I do not know a finer 

 example of courage and devotion under the most adverse circumstances. 

 The long, brave struggle was, at length, fitly rewarded by Ameghino's 

 appointment to the directorship of the National Museum in Buenos 

 Aires, which he held till the end of his life. 



In palaeontology, Moreno was rather an amateur. He made quite a 

 successful collecting trip to Patagonia and his special prize was the 

 greater part of a skull of a new and very peculiar animal from the 

 Santa Cruz formation. This he intended to name and describe himself, 

 but, before doing so, he went off on a journey, leaving the precious 

 skull in his private room at the museum. Old Burmeister, who had got 

 wind of the discovery, slipped down to La Plata, where he was allowed 

 to see the new skull, and then went ofl and published a description of 

 it giving it the name of Astrapotherium magnum. Naturally, Moreno 

 was infuriated by this high-handed procedure and tried very hard to 

 substitute his own term, Mesembriotherium , but in vain. The rigid law 

 of priority, which governs zoological nomenclature, requires that the 

 name first given shall stand. 



Not content with importing Mercerat from Switzerland, Moreno 

 invited R. Lydekker, the distinguished palaeontologist of the British 



C 247 3 



