60 JOUENAL OF THE MiTCHELL SOCIETY \_AugUSt 



ing at the living world seems strangely archaic, poetic, to us 

 who have every reason to believe that all material phenomena 

 are clue to material causes, and that resemblances between nat- 

 ural species, living and fossil are material phenomena and of the 

 same kind as resemblances between such races as have been pro- 

 duced from a common stock through man's selective breeding. 

 Agassiz's interpretation of the parallelism between anatomical, 

 paleontological, and embryological facts, obviously must be 

 classed in that group of hypotheses which make immediate 

 appeal to hyperphysical powers in order to explain natural phe- 

 nomena. 



But although today we can only look on Agassiz's theorizing 

 as we look on poetry, we see beneath this cloudy mantle a great 

 man and a master in science, one who exercised a strong and ben- 

 eficial influence on American zoology and American science in 

 general through his constant injunction to compare and so learn 

 what is general, what is fundamental. 



As new ideas come into a science, new fields of investigation 

 are opened, but the old ones are not necessarily closed. And, 

 as we very well know, the study of systematic zoology did not 

 come to an end with the advent of the Agassiz period of com- 

 parison and transcendental interpretation, nor later with the 

 advent of the evolution idea, nor later still with the oncome of 

 the present era of analysis and experiment. On the contrary, 

 along with the rise and development of the many comparative 

 and experimental branches of modern zoology, the description 

 and tabulation of the earth's fauna has gone steadily on, and is 

 today progressing as actively as ever. It is pleasant to think 

 that members of our own society are helping in this piece of 

 the world's work. When we come to think how imperfect is our 

 knowledge, even today after so much labor, as to the kinds of 

 animals that live with us in garden and orchard, in wood and 

 meadow, in pond and stream, and above all in the sea, natural- 

 ists realize what a vast deal of work stands before the describers 

 and classifiers. Everywhere search reveals new forms. As to 

 the place of these in classification how difficult it often is to de- 

 cide. We know that species are not the immutable things Lin- 



