COMRADES IN ZEAL. 307 



nature in a static way, the record of experiments of nature herself, 

 so long in trying, that we do not recognize her movement at all. 

 ^Vllerefo^e descriptive science seems less exhilarating than experi- 

 mental science. It has less movement to it; for nature does not seem 

 to move, and we need not as we watch her; yet static knowledge lies 

 at the foundation of most discoveries in dynamic nature. We must 

 know the plants and animals of any given region and know them 

 exactly before we can study migrations and movements, the origin of 

 faunas, the distribution of forms. The movements in geologic time 

 are best traced by the shells which the rocks carry with them, and these 

 shells admit of no experiment, have no apparent dynamic significance. 

 Descriptive anatomy precedes physiology and interprets it; embryology 

 interprets anatomy, but to a like degree anatomy interprets embryology. 

 Ecology, the study of life histories, interprets all these and is explained 

 by them. According to Lubbock, the knowledge of the habits of ani- 

 mals, their reaction to stimuli, external and internal, is the final end 

 of zoological science. 



It has been a fashion of the fin du siecle sort, a fad of the last end 

 of the last century, for workers in other lines to look down on sys- 

 tematic zoology and systematic botany. They would know the general 

 structure and relations of animals and plants in a great large way, 

 but were infinitely bored by the details, and especially by those of the 

 larger forms, those which can not be sliced and imbedded in Canada 

 balsam. This feeling is unworthy of large-minded men. As I said 

 just now, it is not good form in science for one set of workers to look 

 down on another. The varied details of systematic science embody 

 the fanaticism for veracity of the men who have worked them out. 

 It is, after all, the man who does the minute work who advances 

 science. Anybody can devise new groupings of large lines of facts. 

 The man who found out the least true detail about the heart of the 

 lancelet, even the man who found a new kind of lancelet in the sands 

 of the Bahamas, contributed more to science than the men who gave 

 new names to the class of lancelets in their new schemes of vertebrate 

 classification. As if Leptoeardii were not good enough, we have these 

 little creatures called Acrania, Pharyngobranchii, Cephalochorda or 

 Cirrostomi. We all know that the lancelet is headless, that it has 

 gill slits around the throat, a nerve cord where its head ought to be, 

 and cirri about its mouth, but we knew that when they were Leptoeardii 

 or merely lancelets, and these new names merely cumber the books 

 without adding at all to our knowledge. 



Linnseus once said, vsdth the fine sarcasm of the ancients: 'Tyro 

 novit classes, magister fit species.' Any beginner can define classes 

 of plants. It takes a master to work out the species. Any beginner 

 can see things in the large ; all the world does that ; but only the master 

 can get down to details. He can shut his eyes to all outside, and can 



