HAMILTON: MAMMALOGY IN NORTH AMERICA 669 



the funds thus made available for research. In a recent year, 184 individual proj- 

 ects were under way in 44 states, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Eico, and the Virgin 

 Islands, with emphasis on game and fur animals. In 1951, 33 states had research 

 projects on deer, 22 were investigating fur-bearer problems, chiefly muskrat and 

 beaver, while 11 were investigating rabbits and hares. Other mammals that have 

 received attention are antelopes, squirrels, mountain sheep and goats, elk, moose, 

 and bison. One of the most detailed state mammal surveys yet undertaken has been 

 supported by Pittman-Robertson funds. This Pennsylvania project, under the 

 direction of J. K. Doutt of the Carnegie Museum, has provided more details 

 regarding the distribution and habits of the mammals inliabiting a single com- 

 monwealth than any previous study. 



Under provisions of President F. D. Roosevelt's reorganization plan, made 

 effective June 30, 1940, the Bureau of Fisheries and the Bureau of Biological 

 Survey, in the Department of the Interior, with their respective functions, were 

 consolidated into one agency, to be known as the Fish and Wildlife Service. 



Progress in Paleontological Research 



Few areas are so rich in fossil mammals as western North America. The suc- 

 cessive assemblages of animals which once lived in this vast area have been faith- 

 fully studied for the past ninety years. John Evans, assistant to Dr. David D. 

 Owen, Dr. F. V. Ilayden of the U. S. Geological Survey, and others led important 

 expeditions into this unexplored region. Collecting was not the prosaic occupa- 

 tion of today. Pack horses and wagons carried out the rewards of these expeditions 

 to the single transcontinental railroad; hostile Indians made these explorations 

 extremely hazardous. 



Joseph Leidy was to lay the foundation for the science of American paleon- 

 tology. Trained in medicine. Dr. Leidy had little time to devote to practice, the 

 consuming interest in fossils occupying ever more of his efforts. Baird was 

 instrumental in bringing to Leidy's Philadelphia laboratory the fruits of the 

 Government survey collections. For many years Leidy, unable to accompany the 

 western expeditions, was fully occupied with the fossils, which were never lacking 

 in abundance. He was the American pioneer in paleontological research, describ- 

 ing the extinct oreodonts, camels, rhinoceroses, and titanotheres that roamed the 

 Miocene. His more than two hundred papers on paleontological subjects culmi- 

 nated in a great work on the extinct mammalian fauna of Nebraska and Dakota 

 (Leidy, 1869). This report includes a synopsis of the mammalian remains of 

 North America. A fitting epitaph to this quiet and retiring scientist was given 

 by Osborn, who praised him "as the last great naturalist in the world of the old 

 type, who was able by both his capacity and training to cover the whole field of 

 nature." 



Marsh and Cope completed the triumvirate of the early paleontologists, fol- 

 lowing in the footsteps of Leidy. Independently wealthy. Marsh could muster his 

 own expeditions. His graduate students at Yale accompanied the bone hunter on 

 repeated expeditions to Colorado, Nebraska, Utah and Wyoming. Museums today 

 display Marsh's prized collections of fossil horses, so valuable as a demonstration 

 of evolution. These discoveries were among the finest of those made by Marsh. 



