IOWA ACADEMY OP SCIENCES. 47 



as judge. He rigidly excludes or at least minimizes every 

 particle of evidence in favor of the accused. 



In proof of this statement, witness his treatment of cats 

 that do not come up, or rather down, to his expectations, and 

 his naive brushing aside of the testimony of the animal train- 

 ers whose evidence is most damaging to his theories. For my 

 own part, I still adhere to the belief that the argument sub- 

 mitted to this body in a former paper*, based on the multitude 

 of homologies between man and the higher mammalia is a 

 sound one, and that if this argument is to be overthrown it 

 must be through careful observations of animals that are not 

 psychologically disabled by starvation and imprisonment in 

 boxes, however ingeniously contrived. And I further protest 

 that the men who have gained their knowledge of animals by 

 direct observation of animals in the field, have still their right 

 to be heard on this question; that their observations demand 

 consideration, and their opinions respect. In short, the old 

 style field naturalist refuses to be ruled out of court by 

 the experimental psychogolist of the new school. He emphatic- 

 ally denies jurisdiction, and appeals to the unbiased verdict 

 of thouofhtful men. 



THE DISTRIBUTION OP FOREST TREES IN IOWA. 



BY B. SHIMEK. 



The discussion of the origin of our prairies, and of the dis- 

 tribution of our native forest trees, is as old as our knowledge 

 of the central northwest. The earlier discussions were based 

 on a knowledge of conditions as they existed when the white 

 man first appeared in this section, and, though some of them 

 are crude, and based upon insufficient observation, they fortu- 

 nately give us at least a partial record of those conditions. 



Later observers have the advantage of the results of a vast 

 number of attempts at tree-planting, which have subjected 

 existing conditions to a practical test, and which throw con- 

 siderable light upon the causes which perpetuated the treeless 

 prairies. From the very nature of the case, however, it is 

 quite as difficult now to exactly distinguish in some cases 



* " Do the Lower Animals Reason? " Proceedings Iowa Academy of Sciences, 1897 



