The Days of a Man 1907 



Henry P. Armsby of Pennsylvania State College, 

 and Gifford Pinchot, United States Forester. Our 

 duty was to devise a means to promote agriculture 

 in its economic and social phases. Our report, 

 published in November, 1908, was largely a plea for 

 scientific rather than spectacular results, and for free- 

 dom of study for competent investigators. "It is not 

 the business of the government to test the farmer's 

 seeds but to develop farmers who can test their own 

 seeds." 



Life too About this period I began to give considerable 

 short attention to certain important biological generaliza- 

 tions which, if life were longer, I should deal with in 

 detail. As a matter of fact, I did block out a book on 

 the law of geminate species among animals and 

 plants, but as the evidence could be given only in a 

 long series of expensive colored plates beyond the 

 %: reach of available publishers, I have not attempted 



to go farther. 



Ortko- Two generalizations in Ichthyology, both extremely 



obscure, have also intrigued me. These are "ortho- 

 genesis" on the one hand and, on the other, the rela- 

 tion of temperature to the number of vertebrae in 

 individuals or species. According to Eimer, the Ger- 

 man investigator who coined the word, orthogenesis 

 may be defined as determinate evolution along 

 definite lines as contrasted with the movement of 

 divergence. Among fishes I notice that in certain 

 groups some particular structure, having attained an 

 extreme degree of development and specialization 

 along a given line, next undergoes progressive de- 

 generation, to be finally altogether lost. 



Two groups of fishes possibly furnish examples in 

 point. In the series with bony stay across the 

 C 248 3 



