28 NATIONAL TRENDS IN BIOLOGY 



great advance ; (4) 1850 with its revolutions or attempted 

 revolutions, and (5) the last twenty years has been a time 

 of great unsettlement and difficulty ; where we are going 

 now, I do not know. I expect we are in the stodgy period, 

 but in forty or fifty years we may have a world cataclysm 

 which will stimulate people afresh." 



A general survey of the literature on biology of the past 

 thirty years demonstrates that the earliest investigators 

 by no means always had enough facts at hand on which 

 to build their speculations, but one may add that such 

 lack of facts by no means lessened the output of specu- 

 lation. However, an amount of good work was done, so 

 that one really did obtain more exact anatomical and 

 physiological data, especially in cytology and neurology. 

 Much of the advance in the latter subject was due to the 

 excellent work of the Spaniard, Ramon y Cajal. Consider- 

 able promotion and dissemination of biological knowledge 

 through various periodicals then took place, which, in 

 turn, stimulated general interest enough so that provi- 

 sion was made for specially equipped laboratories. 



But merely extending knowledge a step further is not 

 developing science. Breeding homing pigeons that could 

 cover a given space with ever-increasing rapidity did not 

 give us the laws of telegraphy, nor did breeding faster 

 horses bring us the steam locomotive. The so-called im.- 

 provements of the microscope pertain to improving the 

 stands that hold the lenses. Until a new principle of optics 

 is discovered, the microscope remains what it is. 



