240 A CENTURY OF SCIENCE 



as yet unfinished, were published in the Journal in 

 1901-1904. 



"William B. Scott is a graduate of Princeton, and has 

 spent thirty-four years in her service as Blair Professor 

 of Geology and Paleontology. His first publication, in 

 1878, issued in conjunction with Osborn and Speir, 

 described material collected by them in the Eocene for- 

 mations of the West, and since that time Scott's research 

 has been entirely with the mammals, on which he is one of 

 our highest authorities. His most notable works have 

 been a History of Land Mammals of the Western Hemi- 

 sphere, 1913, and the results of the Patagonian expedi- 

 tions by Hatcher, which are published in a quarto series 

 in conjunction with W. J. Sinclair, although they are the 

 authors of separate volumes, Scott's work being mainly 

 on the carnivores and edentates of the Santa Cruz forma- 

 tion. It is as a systematist in research and as an educa- 

 tor that Scott has attained his highest usefulness. 



The man who, next to the three pioneers, has attained 

 the highest reputation in vertebrate paleontologic 

 research, is Henry Fairfield Osborn. Graduate of 

 Princeton in the same class that produced Scott, Osborn 

 served for a time as professor of comparative anatomy 

 in that institution, and in 1891 was called to New York to 

 organize the department of zoology in Columbia Uni- 

 versity and that of vertebrate paleontology in the Ameri- 

 can Museum of Natural History. He had, early in his 

 career, gone west in company with Professor Scott, and 

 had collected material from the Eocene formation of 

 Wyoming, upon which they based their first joint paper 

 in 1878, Osborn 's first independent production, a memoir 

 on two genera of Dinocerata, appearing in 1881. A num- 

 ber of papers followed, on the Mesozoic Mammalia, on 

 Cope's tritubercular theory, and on certain apparent evi- 

 dences for the transmission of acquired characters. It 

 was, however, with his acceptance of the New York 

 responsibilities, especially at the American Museum, 

 that Osborn 's most significant work began. Aided first 

 by Wortman and Earle, later by W. I). Matthew and 

 others, he has built up the greatest and most complete 

 collection of fossil vertebrates extant; its value, how- 

 ever, was largely enhanced through the purchase of the 



