4 Experimental Zoology 



Perhaps also the fact that the historical side of biology attracts 

 such popular interest accounts, in part, for the neglect of more 

 searching scientific methods of study. 



Whether the method of observation or the method of observa- 

 tion and experiment is followed, seems to be also a question 

 of the kind of interest aroused by hving objects. If the number 

 of collectors, naturalists, zoologists, anatomists, entomologists, 

 ornithologists, mammalogists, conchologists, etc., be compared 

 with the number of physiologists, physiological chemists, bac- 

 teriologists, it will be seen that the former have an enormous 

 advantage in numbers. It is true that a few zoologists are 

 experimentalists, and that some physiologists do not experiment 

 at all, but the proportion remains about the same. In other 

 words, interest in collecting and recording the results of obser- 

 vation and in the artistic side of nature is much more wide- 

 spread than interest in the study of problems, or, if the interest 

 is not lacking, the will to take the initiative in the formulation 

 and solution of problems seems to be less cultivated in the 

 biological sciences than the power to observe and to describe. 

 In so far as the followers of the one or of the other method of 

 investigation have made their selection as a matter of tempera- 

 ment, the disproportion will probably always remain ; but in so 

 far as the result is due to imitation, or to following the line of 

 least resistance, or to a failure to appreciate differences in aim 

 and method, the proportion may to some extent be altered ; and 

 I think it will be generally admitted that at the present time there 

 is greater need for experimental work than for descriptive and 

 observational study. 



It is sometimes said that experimental study is the analytical 

 study of problems, and this in a sense is true, but it is only a part 

 of the truth. It is rather the method of attacking problems that 

 is the chief characteristic of experimental work, for is not the 

 historical method also a study of problems? We demand in 

 the case of a problem in experimental science that the condi- 

 tions under which an event takes place be discovered, and that, 

 if possible, we reproduce artificially the result by controlling the 



