606 A CENTURY OF PROGRESS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 



that Colonel Wall should have dropped herpetologieal investigation and publica- 

 tion completely on his retirement in 1925. 



The rather inflexible organization of the British Museum staff, which assigns 

 a clerk to a Division, but does not envisage the advancement of a clerk to a 

 curatorship, is in sharp contrast with American Museums where every office boy 

 aspires to be director. It is thus gratifying to an American observer that J. C. 

 Battersby (1901-), Clerk in the British Museum's Division of Reptiles, was at 

 last placed in charge of the Division, since, when Dr. Parker was made Keeper 

 of Zoology, the Trustees of the Museum refused otherwise to fill his vacated 

 post in reptiles, apparently on the ground that he (Parker) could fill both posi- 

 tions. Mr. Battersby, meanwhile, has carried on the useful role of herpetologieal 

 bibliographer for the Zoological Record, which, after Boulenger's last contribu- 

 tion in 1904, had been compiled by Sollas, Tate Regan, C. L. Boulenger, Joan 

 Proctor, and Malcolm Smith. 



Herpetology in North America 



Herpetology in North America had made promising beginnings by 1850, and 

 stood on its own feet in its exploration of the North American continent. The 

 North American Herptology of John Edward Holbrook, published in two editions, 

 with a multitude of emendations and separate printings of individual plates 

 between 1836 and 1842, had established the North American region as a special 

 field. The collections of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia had 

 become important, and had formed the basis for numerous herpetologieal papers 

 in its Proceedings. In 1850 Spencer Fullerton Baird (b. 1823, d. 1887) became 

 Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, i.e.. Director of the United 

 States National Museum. Baird 's interests ranged over the whole field of zoology, 

 though certainly with herpetology as his last and most permanent love. The 

 Catalogue of North American Reptiles, characteristically perhaps, carried no 

 further than Part I (the snakes), was prepared jointly with the young French- 

 man, Charles Girard (1822-1895), one of the able assistants attracted to Wash- 

 ington by Baird. Another of these was Robert Kennicott of Chicago, whose death 

 in Alaska in 1866, at only thirty-four, was one of the calamities to North Amer- 

 ican zoology, and more particularly to the development of natural history in the 

 Middle West. More important than his own writings in herpetology was Baird's 

 indefatigable encouragement of the collecting of specimens for the rapidly grow- 

 ing scientific collections for what was to become the United States National Mu- 

 seum. He became the second secretary of the Smithsonian Institution (i.e., its 

 Director) on the death of Joseph Henry in 1878 and in that capacity furthered 

 herpetology still more by the program of publication of the new Museum, whose 

 first Bulletin appeared in 1875, though the formal designation of the Museum as 

 a separate entity came in 1876. 



The importance of Baird in the history of American science, and perhaps 

 especially to American herpetology, can scarcely be overemphasized. Together 

 with the encouragement of collecting and his own reports on the growing collec- 

 tions, he furthered the careers and interests of the younger American zoologists 

 of his day. In addition to his faithful collaborator Girard and the enthusiastic 

 young Kennicott, there were W. H. Yarrow and finally the brilliant and inde- 



