President's Address. 185 
Tom, Dick, and Harry might be amused (for a little) by the 
_ pictorial groups, but I am afraid they would find the genea- 
logical tree even duller than the ordinary zoological collections 
with the birds on crutches and the beasts on flat boards. 
The study of comparative anatomy and of scientific 
zoology requires much time and much mental exertion, and 
to go deeply into it cannot be expected of any one but the 
special student, certainly not of those who have to occupy 
the best part of their brain power in the task of making 
their daily bread. 
I am as thorough an evolutionist as Professor Herdman, 
and yet I cannot see that the main object of a public 
natural history museum is to teach ordinary people evolu- 
tion against their will. And I also think that ordinary 
people may be very reasonably and profitably interested in 
zoology without being deep comparative anatomists. But 
as regards the special student, that is quite another thing, 
and for him should be provided a special type collection, as 
we shall see further on. 
The next question which I shall bring before you is, how 
should the subject, usually known as “paleontology,” be treated 
in a natural history museum? In most peoples’ minds, the 
study of fossils is a part of “geology,” though it ought to be 
plain to the meanest intellect that whatever be the bearings 
of palzontology on geology, the study of the fossils them- 
selves is simply a part of zoology or botany, as the case may 
be. .Yet so perverse is the human intellect, that, if a man 
works at a particular group of fossil animals, be it from a 
purely zoological standpoint, he will probably, to his surprise, 
soon find himself credited with a profound knowledge of “re- 
gional metamorphism ”—“striated boulders’”—“river terraces,” 
and many other things which may not be at all in his line, 
—at least not specially so! And as he becomes erroneously 
credited as a “geologist,” he will probably also become dis- 
credited as a zoologist, for his “biological” brethren will 
have none of him, or his fossils either! Yet does an animal 
cease to be an animal because rt is preserved in stone instead 
of in spirits? Is a skeleton any the less a skeleton because 
it has been excavated from the rock, instead of prepared in 
