Lxiv CHARLES OTIS WHITMAN 
he gave to this work inevitably led him to results of great impor- 
tance. 
A general survey was made of the color-patterns of nearly six 
hundred wild species, and of nearly two hundred domestic races 
of pigeons. Large numbers of genera and species from all parts 
of the world were brought to the breeding pens of his yard. 
With indefatigable patience the plumage patterns of the living 
birds were studied; the sequence of pattern in the plumages 
from young to old was accurately observed; and thoughtful experi- 
ments were devised to bridge the gap between the moults, and thus 
displace apparent discontinuities with visually realized continui- 
ties. The primitive pattern of many diverse orders of birds was 
also ascertained, and the general primitive basis of color-marking 
in all birds—the ‘fundamental bars’ were discovered. 
The direction of the evolution as it was indicated by all these 
studies was, moreover, again and again retested by evidence of an 
entirely different sort. Such characters as voice, behavior, and 
fertility were separately subjected to similar appropriate vigor- 
ous comparative and breeding tests to learn whether the resulting 
data would parallel each other and that furnished by the exten- 
sive study of the color-pattern. Only when, by all these means 
and others, he had accumulated a vast amount of reliable, consis- 
tent and convergent testimony as to where the various genera and 
species stand in the phylogenetic series, did Professor Whitman 
permit himself to feel that he was reading aright the history of the 
specific characters of the pattern. And it isa very real monument 
to his scientific greatness, that, not until he knew all this of the 
character with which he was working, and much besides, would 
he write as much as one line concerning it. 
In his yards were hybridized nearly forty wild species of pig- 
eons, most of these crosses being made here for the first time. 
The results of continued breeding of the simple and complex 
hybrids from these forty pure wild species, and of several domestic 
races, furnish a mass of most remarkable data. The conclusions 
from these data being at the same time checked and supported by 
the results of other lines of study on the same material. 
