28 Kansas Academy of Science. 



to California, and in every rook group from the Potsdam sandstone 

 to the Tertiary — in all, 700 or 800 species of fossils and 200 or 300 

 species of rocks and minerals. 



The search for natural-history specimens is but one of the many 

 forms of the collecting activity. As the speaker observed in a 

 paper read at the Manhattan meeting of this Academy, the love of 

 collecting is well-nigh universal, and the usefulness of the thing 

 collected has little influence with the collector. To get something 

 some one else has not, or something that is handsomer than that 

 possessed by another, is balm to the feelings, and is inherent in all 

 life tendencies, whether of man or of the lower organisms. 



Modern psychology teaches that the mainspring of the will lies 

 in the feelings and emotions, and not in the intellect, as was once 

 believed. We do what we desire, not what the intellect advises. 

 The student of social ethics has long since learned that the feelings 

 aroused by possession and by rivalry are most potent in determin- 

 ing conduct. This is explained by the scientist who has formu- 

 lated theories concerning heredity, by affirming that the feelings 

 aroused by possession and rivalry are racial in their character, and 

 are, therefore, inherited, subconscious tendencies in the individual ; 

 and that this is why they are so powerful in determining what we 

 shall or shall not do. 



To illustrate the power of these subconscious tendencies over 

 the individual who chances to be a naturalist or even a collector of 

 mere curiosities, please try to imagine the correct answers to the 

 following questions : Why should Doctor Horn pay fifty dollars 

 for a single beetle ? What was there about a tiger-beetle, the A?n- 

 hlycJdla Gylindriforjnis, that was so valuable or interesting that 

 the museums of Europe and America were anxious to pay Doctor 

 Snow twenty-five dollars a head for them ? What is there about a 

 tropical butterfly that should cause collectors to pay $100 or $200 

 for a single specimen ? And why should millions of dollars be in- 

 vested in canceled postage-stamps by stamp collectors in Europe 

 and America ? 



Those who have never made a collection, save of silver, gold or 

 paper dollars, who have never turned their racial collecting tenden- 

 cies in the direction of natural-history specimens, find it nearly 

 impossible to understand why such work as that performed by 

 Doctor Snow has such a powerful attraction for naturalists. 



One summer Louis Agassiz, then at the height of his fame as a 

 public lecturer and as professor of zoology at Harvard, spent sev- 

 eral weeks collecting in Vermont. A gentleman wishing to see 



