1896. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 283 



deposition. It is important to study the aggregations of species in the 

 rocks, that we may perchance find bionomic connections between the 

 species belonging to different genera, such as undoubtedly obtain in 

 modern seas. These are Hnes of investigation that cannot be followed 

 in the museum alone, but that demand for their study long days spent 

 in the field, carefully collecting and comparing the fossils from one 

 horizon with those from another, carefully noting the positions of the 

 organisms in the rocks and the mutual relations of associated 

 specimens, and combining with this research the petrological and 

 chemical examination of the matrices that contain the remains. All 

 this constitutes a division of paleontology which is undoubtedly 

 recognised by some of our best workers, but which the pure zoologist 

 and the pure geologist are too often tempted to overlook, since it 

 requires for its prosecution a careful training in both zoology and 

 geology. 



Pavingstone Palaeontology. 



It is, however, not our object to emphasise the need for the study 

 of any particular branch of palaeontology, but to point out the distinct- 

 ness of faunistic study from that zoological and morphological division 

 of the science, with which it is too often confused. The task of 

 describing species and of investigating the structure of fossils must be 

 handed over to men who have had a thorough training in the 

 principles of systematic zoology and of comparative anatomy. It is 

 useless, many of us think it is worse than useless, for the collector or 

 even the geologist to attempt the taxonomic description of his own 

 specimens : even when he does not make egregious mistakes, he is apt 

 to be satisfied with a diagnosis that may possibly be enough for his 

 brother hammer in the same parish working at the same restricted 

 horizon, but that is of no value for the systematist approaching the 

 subject from a more universal standpoint, and that, when placed 

 before the morphologist, only succeeds in leading him astray. Even 

 the mere determination of fossils has nowadays become, like the 

 determination of recent animals and plants, a task for the specialist in 

 taxonomy, and the lists that we constantly see issued in connection 

 with stratigraphical papers can be proved, as Natural Science has 

 before now proved some of them, to be lengthy aggregations of error. 

 Correct conclusions cannot follow from such inaccurate premises ; 

 inevitably the determination, no less than the description, of fossils 

 must be left to systematists, who should have had a training in 

 general morphology, and who must be specialists on particular 

 groups. 



If the preceding remarks are as true as experience has led us to 

 believe, it follows that the attempts of various most well-meaning 

 persons to describe from a zoological standpoint the whole fauna or 

 flora of a particular group of rocks are foredoomed to failure. Long 

 ago Huxley scornfully stigmatised such attempts as " pavingstone 



