244 A CENTURY OF SCIENCE 



research and is highly justified in the accuracy of the 

 results, which render the fabric of the skeleton much 

 more intelligible, both to the scientist and to the layman. 

 Material once secured and prepared is then mounted, 

 and here again American ingenuity has accomplished 

 some remarkable results. Some of the specimens thus 

 mounted are so small and delicate as to require holding 

 devices comparable to those for the display of jewels; 

 yet others huge dinosaurs the bones of which are enor- 

 mously heavy, but so brittle that they will not bear even 

 the weight of a process unsupported require a care- 

 fully designed and skilfully worked out series of supports 

 of steel or iron which must be perfectly secure and at the 

 same time as inconspicuous as possible. And of late the 

 lifelike pose of the individual skeleton has been aug- 

 mented by the preparation of groups of several animals 

 which collectively exhibit sex, size, or other individual 

 variations and the full mechanics of the skeleton under 

 the varying poses assumed by the creature during life. 



The work of further restoration has been rendered pos- 

 sible through comparative anatomical study, enabling us 

 to essay restorations in entirety by means of models and 

 drawings, clothing the bones with sinews and with flesh 

 and the flesh with skin and hair, if such the creature 

 bore ; while the laws of f aunal coloration have permitted 

 the coloring of the restoration in a way which if not the 

 actual hue of life is a very reasonable possibility. 



Thus the American paleontologists have blazed a trail 

 which has been followed to good effect by certain of their 

 Old World colleagues. 



With such means and methods and such material avail- 

 able, it is again not surprising that American paleontology 

 has furnished more and more of the evidences of evolu- 

 tion, and disclosed to the eyes of scientists animal rela- 

 tionships which were undreamed of by the systematist 

 whose research dealt only with the existing. It has also 

 explained some vexatious problems of animal distribution 

 and of extinction, and has connected up cause and effect 

 in the great evolutionary movements which are recorded. 



The results of systematic research have added hosts of 

 new genera and species and of families, but of orders 

 there are relatively few. Nevertheless a number, 



