'*Back to Nature" Scientifically as Well 

 as Emotionally 



THE CASE FOR .AIUKE FIELD WORK IX BIOLfXJY' 

 By W M. E. R I T T E H 



Director of Scripps Institution for Biological Research of the University of California 



I WISH to set before you some of 

 the grounds of my conviction tliat 

 the future's progress in the bio- 

 logical sciences will be accomplished by 

 a far closer, more vital interdependence 

 between researches out in nature and 

 researches in the laboratory; between 

 data gathered in the field and those se- 

 cured in the laboratory either by obser- 

 vation alone or by observation coupled 

 with experimentation. The "natural 

 history mode of philosophizing" will 

 have to be taken far more seriously, I 

 am persuaded, in years soon to come, 

 than it is now.^ 



Laboratory learning when uncoupled 

 with field work is very defective in the 

 development of the powers of observa- 

 tion. For example, laboratory teaching 

 rarely if ever even pretends to make use 

 of the sense of hearing for acquiring 

 an understanding of animals. Yet tlie 

 whole province of sound presented by 

 numerous mammals, most birds, and 

 many insects is open to cultivation and 

 contains much that is highly educative 

 and pleasure-yielding, and, further- 

 more, is the vestibule to biological prob- 

 lems of great interest. 



Again the sense of smell, so well- 

 nigh completely neglected as an avenue 

 through which knowledge of plants and 



- Having taken a leading part in bringing into 

 existence two biological laboratories, one at Ber- 

 keley, a teaching laboratory primarily, another at 

 La JoUa, a research laboratory primarily, I hardly 

 can be charged with inexperience of the methods 

 and scope and possibilities of such laboratories 

 either as instruments of research or of teaching. 

 I yield to no one in appreciation of laboratory 

 work, not only for the magnificent things already 

 accomplished by it, but for the greater things yet 

 to be accomplished by the same means. But in the 

 face of this, I express, very deliberately, the con- 

 viction that exclusive reliance on lal)oratory and 

 experimental methods has gone so far in biology as 

 to work great harm to the biological thought of 

 our day, not alone among professional biologists, 

 but also on the part of the general public. 



' Extracts from an address given before the C 



animals may be obtained, is in reality 

 full of possibilities for penetrating into 

 some of the most recondite provinces of 

 life phenomena. For instance, our 

 noses brought systematically to bear on 

 the odors of flowers would constitute a 

 method of qualitative chemical analy- 

 sis, as one might call it, for determin- 

 ing some aspects of the chemistry of 

 plants the delicacy of which cannot be 

 approached by ordinary chemistry. 

 Chemical natural history ought to and 

 undoubtedly wdll sooner or later ad- 

 dress itself seriously to odors in both 

 zoology and botany, for it is an open 

 and beckoning door to the fundamental 

 problem of chemical distinctions of 

 species. Considerable attention to the 

 matter has convinced me that very 

 many blossoms usually accounted odor- 

 less are not really so, and that in the 

 greater number of cases each species is 

 distinguishable from every other by its 

 odor. Something of the meaning of 

 this as touching species differentiation 

 in chemical substances and processes is 

 readily perceived when one remembers 

 that according to present views the 

 sense of smell is a chemical sense, re- 

 sponding to chemical stimuli. 



Even the cultivation of the sense of 

 sight, depended upon virtually alone 

 in laboratory observation, is exceed- 

 ingly lopsided. Alertness of sight is 

 encouraged hardly at all. The com- 

 plete passivity of the anatomical prepa- 

 ration fosters deliberatencss and slow- 

 ness and inclines toward sluggishness 

 and finally dullness of seeing; nor is 

 the set-up and controlled physiological 

 experiment much if any better in this 

 respect. 



IIow different the attitude of the lab- 



lilifornia Academy of Sciences, San Francisco 



403 



