THE OSPREY. 



127 



been committed; and it is never too late to 

 mend the manners of an offender. The par- 

 ticular case we now have in hand conies up 

 opportunely in connection with Mr. Birt- 

 welFs study of aptosorhromatism in the pres- 

 ent number. 



Early in 1S93, when the present Director of 

 the Museum of the California Acadenij- of 

 Sciences was 3'oun{!rcr than he is now, he pub- 

 lished a remarkable book, the title of which 

 is above cited. This work was not free from 

 errors of fact; it was vitiated to some extent 

 by sheer exuberance of youthful ardor; but it 

 was set forth with g-cnuiue modesty, with en- 

 tire oriffinality, in a tentative, appealing, 3'et 

 singularly effective manner; in fine, with all 

 the defects of its qualities, it bore the stamp 

 of genius. A verj' j'oung man ventured a piece 

 of pioneering in a very large and intricate 

 field, and found a way which some older and 

 wiser heads had sought in vain. Sonieti.mes 

 he seemed to be lost, but he kept on, and was 

 rewarded at the end by the cordial greeting 

 of such men as Alfred Kussel Wallace, G. J. 

 Romanes, and E. D. Cope, who recognized the 

 ability, the candor and the industry of the 

 author, as well as the value of the results to 

 which these good qualities aspired. Mr. Wal- 

 lace and Mr. Cope both re%iewed the work 

 favorably; and Mr. Romanes wrote to the 

 author as follows, under date of May 31, 1893: 

 "I have now read it all, and with the greatest 

 interest. Part I is a singularly able and im- 

 partial review of the matter with which it 

 deals, and gives me individually some valua- 

 ble hints touching further present.ation of my 

 own views. But, good as it is, I'art II is 

 greatly' better, as showing the powers of an 

 ardent investigator, and not merely those of 

 a diligent critic. To me it seems a solid piece 

 of zoological work, as important as it is ar- 

 duous. 1 sincerely congratulate you on its ac- 

 complishment." 



Why. then, has such a work been almost en- 

 tirely ignored by American ornithologists? 

 Simjjly because it was supposed to have been 

 killed by a writer in the Auk, April. 1S93, pp. 

 1S9-195. over the initials "J. A. A." The author 

 made a spirited defense, ibid., October, 1S93, 

 pp. 373-377: btit it proved of little avail, as it 

 was repulsed with a second show- of killing the 

 book, ibid., pp. 377-380, also by "J. A. A." Mr. 

 Keeler's case was thus hustled out of court, 

 by right of might, and how it appears at pres- 

 ent, at least to the defendant, may be shown 

 by extracts from a letter addressed by him to 

 the present reviewer, dated Berkeley, Cal., 

 March 2, 1899: 



"Dr. Allen did not treat me fairly or honor- 

 ably in his reviews, and I have always believed 

 that some day justice would be done in the 

 matter. * * * I was young when I did the 

 work, and it has many of the faults of youth. 

 The preface, however, stated very clearly its 

 tentative character, and I have always wel- 

 comed honest criticism. There is little save 

 the most fundamental principles that is final 

 in science. Like life, it is a process of evolu- 

 tion, and the sur\'ival of the fittest. Those of 

 us who are anxious to have truth prevail over 

 error should, therefore, be glad to have our 

 false theories replaced by truer ones, but this 



can never be accomplished by denunciation. 



Many of the theories advanced in my paper 

 have never been discussed, for no one has had 

 the courage to defy the bitterness of Dr. Al- 

 len. In the one point which has received at- 

 tention, the change of pigmentation in the 

 feather. Dr. Allen has been proved to be in 

 the wrong. Yet neither he nor Mr. Chapman 

 has had the grace to admit the point." 



Ay, there's the rub! We are too old to take 

 quite so tragic a view of the situation as may 

 be forgiven in a much younger author, still 

 smarting under a sense of wrong; but we do 

 know that a great injustice was done Mr. 

 Keeler through the sheer ignorance of '"J. A. 

 A." of some of the well-known facts of aptoso- 

 chromatism. Whether "J. A. A." is better in- 

 formed now than he was in 1S93 we do not 

 know; but he has never acknowledged his er- 

 ror in print, nor offered to rig'ht the wrong 

 done Mr. Keeler. His attitude reminds us of a 

 story we heard about an old lady who per- 

 sisted in a course of life which her spiritual 

 adviser regarded as worldly and wicked. 

 When he labored with her, and quoted the 

 Gospel of St. John to convince her, she said: 

 "If John had stopped to think he never would 

 have said that;" and she continued in her 

 evil ways. This is not to compare "J. A. A." 

 to an old lady, saint or sinner, but to intimate 

 that if he had stopped to think about aptoso- 

 chromatisni long enough to learn as much 

 about it as Mr. Keeler knew in 1S93, he would 

 never have said what he did when he tried 

 to down Mr. Keeler's book by dogmatic denial 

 of its many merits. 



Ihe question of "courage to defy" such a re- 

 view of Jlr. Keeler's book as "J. A. A." penned 

 strikes as on the funny-bone, and makes us 

 laugh. Yet there is a serious side to it, for 

 there is a mistaken notion in many minds 

 that a re%icw in the Auk carries the whole 

 Weight of the American Ornithologists' Union. 

 But that is absurd; no review in the Auk car- 

 ries any more weight than that of the indi- 

 vidual whose initials authenticate it. We have 

 ourselves written a great many such reviews, 

 which are worth precisely what the opinions 

 of "E. C." ma3- be worth. "J. A. A." is in like 

 case; and the fact that we pay him $300 a 

 year to run the Auk adds no weight to his 

 views on an_v ornithological subject. W'e have 

 criticallv examined his two attacks upon Mr. 

 Keeler's book, with the result that we think 

 Mr. Keeler knew in 1893 a great deal more 

 about the evolution of the colors of North 

 American birds than "J. A. A." has ever dis- 

 covered — or, at least, disclosed to us. We do 

 not accuse "J. A. A." of dishonorable dealing 

 with the book; we find that he simply abused 

 it according to the measure of his ig'norance 

 of the subject, meaning well, perhaps, but 

 succeeding very badly if he tried to be fair 

 and candid. Hell is paved with good inten- 

 tions, they say, but if so, it makes a devilish 

 bad way to go. "J. A. A." seems to us to have 

 been dazed by the novelty of many of Mr. 

 Keeler's facts and theories, the originality 

 with which the^v were set forth, and the 

 traces of genius running through the whole 

 work; and, in this frame of mind, was incom- 

 petent to handle the book judiciously. "Who 



