Vol.X 

 1S93 



Correspondence. 377 



of Pigeons? Many large groups have become highly specialized on a low 

 type of organization, and show a far more complicated color development 

 than the highest families in the scale. 



In a review as long as that of Mr. Allen, it would have seemed reason- 

 able to expect that he would have found room for at least a bare mention 

 of the most important suggestions in the paper in question. Although 

 he alludes to the "large amount of nonsense" in the discussion of recogni- 

 tion markings in which I have simply elaborated some of the views of 

 Wallace and Poulton, following directly in their footsteps, he does not 

 even mention the law of the assortment of pigments, which Prof. Cope 

 considers the most important original contribution of the paper, [8] nor 

 to numerous other matters of greatly more importance than the tail 

 markings of the Passenger Pigeon. I am well aware that the paper is 

 open to an unlimited amount of criticism, but as I asserted in the preface 

 it was not written with any idea of being final or conclusive, but simply to 

 stimulate thought in a new line and to awaken more competent investi- 

 gators to a new field of research. If it accomplish this I am quite will- 

 ing to see it overwhelmed with criticism and die, but 1 appeal to the 

 ornithologists of America not to let it die without bearing some little 

 fruit. Whatever the critics may say I am convinced that amongst the 

 mass of rubbish, if such it be, there are some few suggestions that will 

 be of value in the elucidation of the problems of color evolution, and I 

 most ardently hope that they will be sought out and developed into 

 something better and more worthy of lasting. 



Charles A. Keeler. 



Berkeley, Cain., Sept. 11, /S93. 



[Having given Mr. Keeler so much space, my reply must be as brief as 

 possible, and might be much shorter than it is had Mr. Keeler been a little 

 more exact in his statements as to what I really said in my review of his 

 work. To save space I have inserted numbers enclosed in brackets after 

 the points which seem most to require notice, and reply to them in the 

 correspondingly numbered paragraphs which follow. 



1. In fact, Mr. Keeler himself seems to have forgotten this modest 

 and tentative attitude throughout the greater part of his work. 



2. What I really said on this point needs no qualification, namely, that 

 "much of the speculative writings of Poulton, Romanes, Weismann, and 

 many other writers who have of late been so prolific of explanations of 

 the abstruse things in nature" is natural history romancing posing as 

 science. This is not a general condemnation of the scientific work of 

 these writers, for it is far from my desire to deny to either of them, and 

 particularly to Weismann, the credit of contributing, through genuine 

 research, to the real progress of science. Neither did I so thoroughly 

 condemn Mr. Keeler's own work as his opening sentences above imply; 

 "on the contrary," to quote from my review, "we find much to commend 

 in Mr. Keeler" (p. 190) ; and again: "In the two hundred and odd pages 



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