104: IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



facts which come in exhaustless profusion from the workers in the new ter- 

 ritory. 



One of the main reasons why systematic work has failed to command tlie 

 attention that it deserves on the part of the college students is a wide-spread 

 misapprehension as to its real natui"e and scope. A majority of students 

 ai'e wont to regard systematic zoology as particully to be shunned on account 

 of what they consider its most essential character — an endless succession of 

 fearful names — a veritable nightmare of polysyllabic horrors, the dead lang- 

 uages resurrected for the special discomfort of the unfortunate students. 

 And when we consider the mutilations to which these same dead languages 

 are often subjected before being introduced to the student, the wonder is that 

 any youngster survives the first shock! 



I speak feelingly because I speak from a sad experience. Never will I 

 forget the abject despair with which I contemplated the long pages of class- 

 ification, sub-kingdoms, classes, orders, families, genera and species in the 

 back of Tenny's Manual, all of which I was expected to learn by heart and 

 write on the blackboard under the pathetic delusion that I was learning 

 "Zoology." 



Not a single animal, alive or dead, was presented for inspection during a 

 term's work in zoology (save the mark!) and if some of us, impelled by an 

 unsatiable desire to learn, went to the woods and secured a few living facts, 

 they were rigorously excluded if not expressly substantiated by the inspired 

 Tenny. And this was in a so-called "university." 



The professor of science had a microscope and one slide showing scales on 

 a butterfly's wing, and for any student to have asked for permission to 

 actually use that sacred instrument would haYe been as appalling as Oliver 

 Twists' request for "more! " 



This, although an extreme case, is not by any means an unique one, and 

 many students still regard the endless and, to them, meaningless, classifica- 

 tion as the sum and substance of systematic zoology. 



Huxley hits the nail squarely on the head as usual when he says: "The 

 idea that the ability to repeat any number of so-called "natural classitica- 

 tions," has any thing to do with real knowledge, is injurious alike to students 

 and their examiners." 



At the present time, fortunately, but little remains of what Laukester 

 characterizes as "that state of mind which led to the regarding of the classes 

 and orders recognized by authoritative zoologists as sacred institutions, 

 which were beyond the criticism of ordinary men," and he goes on to say: 

 "There was a theological dogmatism about the whole matter. To deny the 

 Linnean, or later, the Cuvierian classes, Avas very much like denying the 

 Mosaic Cosmogony." 



The student should be given to understand that these formidable classifi- 

 cations -are but the skeleton which his studies and investigations should 

 clothe with living facts, so that finally the dry bones will be almost forgot- 

 ten as he contemplates the beauty and the symmetry of the well-rounded, 

 vital structure. He should be taught that classifications, so far from being 

 inspired or sacred or permanent, are but tempoi'ary expedients to express 

 the individual opinions of their originatoi's, which opinions change with 

 every review of the group classified. 



The main question which I wish to present for your consideration is this: 

 Is the study of systematic zoology especially adapted to the conditions of the 



