286 ANNUAL, REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1923 



lished ; 46 the evolution of the Titanotheres, completed but not yet 

 published, and the evolution of the Proboscidea, still in progress; 

 the practical completion of the splendid monographs on the Santa 

 Cruz Miocene faunas by Scott ; 4T Winge's monograph on the Bra- 

 zilian Edentata; 48 and a remarkable series of brilliant textbooks by 

 Othenio Abel, of Vienna. 49 There are several other excellent text- 

 books that deserve particular notice, but time will not allow even a 

 mention of them here. 



CONCLUSIONS AS TO PROGRESS OF RECENT YEARS 



In the foregoing outline of progress I have been concerned chiefly 

 with discoveries of new material, of new records, because it is the 

 scanty and fragmentary nature of the evidence that is the chief limit 

 to research in vertebrate paleontology and the chief source of error 

 in our conclusions. In the phrase of a French reviewer, vast floods of 

 ink have been spilled on problems of correlation, of phylogeny, of 

 paleogeography, where a few questionable fragments of fossil ver- 

 tebrates formed the salient points of evidence. When in some in- 

 stances an adequate fauna was discovered, the problem was promptly 

 and conclusively settled, the flood of ink suddenly ceased to flow, and 

 deep calm settled over the controversy. 



The fundamental progress achieved appears, therefore, to be 

 measurable better in terms of collections than of researches. I do not 

 altogether agree with a distinguished Columbia professor who de- 

 clared net long ago that paleontologists had no business to reason on 

 or draw conclusions from their specimens, but should content them- 

 selves with describing and illustrating them. 50 Nevertheless, I do 

 think we should distinguish far more sharply between provisional 

 and tentative conclusions based on scanty and fragmentary data and 

 those which are really proven by adequate evidence. 



So far as the older and better known fields of vertebrate paleon 

 tology are concerned, the progress of the past few years has been in 

 the way of consolidating and confirming what had been tentatively 

 sketched out by earlier workers. In the newer fields we are reaching 



*• H. F. Osborn (1918) : Equldse of the Oligocene, Miocene, and Pliocene. Amer. Mus. 

 Mem., n. s., vol. ii, pp. 1-217, pis. i-Iiii. 



«W. B. Scott and W. J. Sinclair (1903-1912) : Rep. Princ. Exped. Patagonia, vols, 

 iv-vi. 



48 A. H. Winge (1915) : Jerdfundne og nulevende Gumlere fra Lagoa Santa. E. Museo 

 Lundii, KjObenhavn, 1915. 



48 O. Abel (1909): Bau und Geschichte der Erde; Das Zeitalter der Reptilien Herr- 

 schaft, Vienna : 1912, Grundziige der Palseobiologie der Wirbelthiere. Schweitzerbait. 

 Stuttgart; 1914, Die Vorzeitlichen Sailgethiere, Fischer, Jena; 1919, Die Stlimme der 

 Wirbelthiere, Ver. wiss. Verleger, Berlin-Leipzig ; 1920, Lehrbuch der Falseozoologie. 

 Fischer, Jena ; Methoden der palaoblol. Forschung TTrb. a. Schwarzenberg, Berlin-Wien : 

 1922, Lebensbilder aus der Tierwelt der Vorzeit, Fischer, Jena. 



80 T. H. Morgan (1916) : A critique of the theory of evolution, pp. 24-27. 



