NATIONAL WORK AT BRITISH MUSEUM BATHER. 629 



scribed, named, and stored in accessible order. Collections still pour 

 in, and the same work has to go on, while the advance of knowledge 

 ever involves revision after revision of the older classifications. Our 

 work is never done. 



Meanwhile on this foundation have arisen all those other branches 

 of biological science, each of which in its turn has seemed to its pro- 

 fessors to be leading the way. When I entered the ranks the labora- 

 tory zoologist contemned the museum worker ; then arose the biome- 

 trician with his scorn for the strainer of sections; to-day we all are 

 expected to walk humbly before the experimental embryologist, the 

 oecologist, and above all the geneticist. 



But we museum systematists do not intend to walk humbly. We 

 assert that the foundation is as necessary to the building as are roof 

 and pinnacles. What was the foundation in history remains the 

 foundation to-day, and our colleagues ignore the fact at their peril. 



The oecologist and field-naturalist probably realize more than the 

 others how dependent they are on the correct identification of the 

 creatures they study. Yet Dr. L. H. Bailey, whom no one can accuse 

 of looking on the world from a narrow museum window, has recently 

 warned the oecologist that he may " fall into false comparisons by 

 carelessness in identification, or by inattention to critical differentia- 

 tions. It really matters very much whether a given distribution rep- 

 resents one specific type or two or more very closely related t}^pes ; in 

 fact, the significance of an ecological study may depend directly on 

 allied taxonomic relationship" (Science, 29th Dec, 1917). Even 

 Fabre, for all his magnificent disdain of the systematist, submitted 

 the naming of his prizes to a learned entomologist of Bordeaux, and 

 on one occasion had to confess that, since he did not at first distin- 

 guish between three species of wasp, he was unable to ascribe to each 

 of them its respective nest. 



But the experimental embryologist! He will conduct ingenious 

 experiments for weeks or months, will promulgate revolutionary 

 theses from their results, and then will calmly tell you that the eggs 

 belonged to " the common starfish," or to " the Echinus of our coasts." 

 So, when a worker on material from American waters learns that his 

 results are not confirmed by colleagues at, say, Naples, he suggests 

 that the sea water must be different; it does not occur to him that 

 the species may be, probably is, different. 



The geneticist and the systematist are both attacking the same 

 problem, but the geneticist cultivates his patch more intensively and 

 deals with differences even more minute than those of the systematist. 

 One would expect him therefore to be even more precise in the identi- 

 fication of his material. Unfortunately too many papers leave the 

 reader uncertain as to the exact species with which the writer Was 

 dealing. A large amount of work has recently been published on 

 65133°— sm 1917 41 



