Natural History Notes from North Carolina. 91 



the study of zoology is to eradicate. That is the way to 

 systematize. The " systematic zoologists " should understand 

 that the way to systematize is to weed out. What vain labor 

 is it to waste time in the definition of " new species," when 

 there is no agreement possible as to what the limit of specific 

 rank is. Each puts his own interpretation upon the record 

 of nature. As no agreement has been reached, and none 

 ever will be reached, why not leave this matter to adjust itself 

 in the orderly and comprehensive manner dictated and 

 designed by the life principle itself? 



With hundreds of synonyms already burdening the malaco 

 logical literature of our land, the blind men still dabble in the 

 small pool at their feet, all unmindful of the vast expanse 

 beyond them. Worse than all, a number of foreign writers, 

 who know next to nothing of the subject, if we are to judge 

 their learning by their crude utterances, are filling in their 

 "new species" and "varieties," followed complacently by the 

 writer's name, as though any American student of our shells 

 did not recognize that it is all twaddle, and a part of that pro- 

 found conchological investigation which originated mathe- 

 matical formulae for the number of stripes on a Hcli.x 

 nemoralis ! 



The proper treatment of this subject is that of Mr. Chas. 

 T. Simpson, whose late contribution (Notes on the Unionidse 

 of Florida and the South-Eastern States, Proceedings U. S. 

 National Museum, Vol. XV.) is by far the mo.^t careful, 

 philosophical and useful paper ever published relating to 

 these protean bivalves. Basing his paper upon a private collec- 

 tion of over seven hundred species, with great experience as a 

 field naturalist, with all the recent types of new species at his 

 command, and with the unequaled collection of the National 

 Museum before him, this gentleman has given us a treatise 

 that should be carefully studied by all students of our 

 mollusks, and might, with great profit and advantage, be 

 studied by all the systematic zoologists of the world. The 

 time is coming when describing fragments of fossils as species, 

 and piling up endless generic definitions on casts and molds 

 of extinct animals, will cease to be regarded as in any way a 

 useful contribution to science. As the earth's races have 

 gone forward in development, or have passed off the stage, 



