614 ^ CENTURY OF PROGRESS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 



the plan to graft laboratory methods on taxonomic procedure, and to expand the 

 work of his division into other aspects of natural history than the purely sys- 

 tematic. With lavish financial support from trustees of the museum, he created 

 a new department of ''Biology"; but he could never bring himself to give up the 

 curatorship of herpetology. His contribution to experimental biology lay in 

 acquaintance with and use of novel experimental animals. His contribution to 

 taxonomy consisted in the application of Nicholl's suggestions as to the classifi- 

 cation of the frogs, with renewed anatomical and developmental studies. Animal 

 behavior and animal psychology led him into studies on fishes, and to the applica- 

 tion of ideas from bird-study to herpetology, especially to courtship in lizards 

 (1933). His most important work. The Biology of the A7nj)hihia (1931) well 

 expresses the breadth of his interests. Noble's long succession of herpetological 

 assistants (not to mention those in biology) began with myself and ended, at his 

 sudden death, with Charles M. Bogert (b. 1908), with our jointly valued friend 

 Clifford H. Pope (b. 1899) at about the middle of the series. Bogert has happily 

 continued the tradition of a welding of experimental and anatomical techniques 

 into a "new systematics." 



The Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh built up herpetological collections, be- 

 ginning with the Haseman expeditions to South America (primarily for fishes), 

 and has maintained a Division of Herpetology under the curatorship of M. Gra- 

 ham Netting (b. 1904) since 1925. At the Chicago Natural History Museum (then 

 Field Museum) a Division of Reptiles was organized by myself in 1922. This has 

 been under the curatorship of Clifford H. Pope (b. 1899) since 1941. 



In the West the public museum as research institute is represented only by the 

 museum of the California Academy of Sciences at San Francisco. This institu- 

 tion has had a distinguished herpetological program since the eighteen-nineties. 

 The publishing career of Dr. John van Denburgh (b. 1872, d. 1924) extended 

 from 1894 to 1924. He was effectively aided by Joseph R. Slevin in building up 

 the collection, the domain of which was envisaged as the Pacific Ocean and its 

 bordering lands. Notable in the history of the Academy was the definitive collect- 

 ing in the zoologically classic archipelago of the Galapagos Islands. The Academy 

 has also taken the lead in the exploration of the Lower California Peninsula (Baja 

 California). 



Several of the larger museums and various university museums of the United 

 States have engaged in the exploration of Mexico and Central America, which 

 naturally invite the interest of herpetologists. Building upon the works of Bocourt 

 and Giinther, our knowledge of Mexican herpetology in particular has been 

 brought to the advanced state in which check lists of the fauna could be prepared. 

 Check lists of the snakes (1945) , amphibians (1948) , and of the remaining reptiles 

 (1950) by Hobart M. Smith and Edward H. Taylor summarize their own work 

 and that of others. 



The Canadian fauna of amphibians and reptiles being relatively impoverished, 

 herpetology has been little more than an appendage to the active studies, on other 

 groups of vertebrates, that have long flourished in Canada. Herpetological col- 

 lections have nevertheless accumulated, especially at the Royal Ontario Museum 

 with E. B. S. Logier, at the Provincial Museum of British Columbia under 

 G. Clifford Carl. This fauna has been supplied with a check list by R. Colin Mills 

 (1948). 



