MAMMALOGY MILLER 405 



limited problems of classification, distribution, or relationship. 

 The advance in knowledge since 1890 has been so rapid that every 

 student knows that the preparation of a complete work on the mam- 

 mals of the world is beyond the capacity of any individual worker. 

 But fortunately, near the beginning of this period, Dr. E. L. Troues- 

 sart of Paris had the foresight to publish a Catalogus Mammalium 

 tam viventium quam fossilum, in which the results of the systematic 

 study of mammals during the 140 years following Linnaeus were 

 summarized. It contains the enumeration of 4,423 recognizably dif- 

 ferent kinds of living mammals together with references to the pub- 

 lications in which descriptions of each kind may be found. Since 

 1898, when the last part of the Catalogus appeared, not less than 

 8,700 new names have been added to the list of living species and 

 subspecies; and the process is continuing at an undiminished rate 

 of about 250 a year. 



The recent development of mammalogy has been mainly dependent 

 on two factors — interest in the problems having to do with the 

 nature and history of the life which now exists in the world, and 

 the finding of a technique by means of which the study could be 

 successfully carried on. The interest was aroused by Charles Darwin 

 and the stimulating controversies which have never ceased to grow 

 from his writings; the technique was worked out by an Associate 

 of the Smithsonian Institution, Dr. C. Hart Merriam. 



The effect which Darwin's work has had on the general concept of 

 the life of our globe is too well known to require more than brief 

 mention here. Welding together,- by the force of his genius for 

 observation and clear reasoning, the scattered existing ideas of an 

 evolutionary explanation of vital phenomena, he made it impos- 

 sible longer to regard the different kinds of animals and plants as 

 the fixed and rather simple elements in a finished and immutable 

 structure. Convinced by the evidence so clearly set forth by Darwin 

 the naturalist of to-day regards all living things of the past and 

 present as phases of one great life process whose history he is slowly 

 learning to trace — through a period covering millions of years — 

 and whose progress depends not on fixity and simplicity but on 

 capacities for never-ending change and for the production of results 

 complex beyond the possibility of realization by the untrained mind. 



Wliile the point of view from which the study of mammalogy had 

 been regarded was thus profoundly altered by the Englishman, Dar- 

 win, the means by which the new approach could be effectually made 

 were developed by the American, Merriam. His interest grounded by 

 the personal influence of Professor Baird and stimulated by the ex- 

 ample of the brilliant contemporary development of ornithology, 

 Merriam brought to the systematic investigation of mammals a mind 



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