Sept. 8, 1887] 



NATURE 



449 



South Wales, Cornwall, and the west of Ireland, whose fossils, if 

 they ever existed, have been entirely obliterated ^ by the changes 

 which their matrix has undergone, and whose very stratification 

 has been lost by metamorphic action. In such investigations 

 some of our ablest geologists have now been for long occupied 

 with the best possible results, and Bonney, Callaway, Cole, 

 Davies, Geikie, Hicks, Hull, Judd, Lapworth, Peach, Sorby, 

 Teall, and many others have been labouring most zealously on 

 these most ancient sediments, barren though they be of life 

 forms, and often destitute of bedding. 



It is refreshing, however, to find Prof. Judd at times abandon- 

 ing volcanoes, and turning his attention most successfully to 

 lizard-hunting with Prof. Huxley in the Elgin sandstones, or 

 studying the micro-organisms in the cores from the Richmond 

 boring or the valley of the Nile ; to see Dr. Hicks leaving his 

 patron St. David far behind, and digging for bones in the pre- 

 Glacial caves at St. Asaph. Prof Lapworth, too, we see 

 avoiding Cape Wrath, and discoursing on the beauties of 

 Canadian Graptolites and the Cambrian rocks at Nuneaton. 



Thus there is still a bond of union connecting stratigraphical 

 geology and palaeontology and a common ground of interest 

 whereon all geologists may meet. It should then be our endea- 

 vour not to dissociate ourselves or our interest from any subject 

 of geological inquiry, but to maintain the union between all 

 branches of our science and with all workers in whatever field 

 they may labour, adopting for our motto the ancient maxim, 

 " Vis unita fortior est." 



Especially should we adhere to the study of palaeontology, seeing 

 that it is indissolubly connected with one of the earliest chapters 

 in the history of our science. Indeed, through the evidence 

 afforded by organic remains, William Smith (better known by 

 the title given to him by Prof. Sedgwick, " the father of English 

 geology ") was led to those remarkable generalizations as to the 

 identification of strata by means of their contained fossils, which 

 have exercised so great an influence over our own science during 

 the past ninety years, and is still the guiding principle on which 

 our classification of the sedimentary rocks is based. What 

 Wollaston has done for mineralogy and crystallography, William 

 Smith initiated for stratigraphical geology ; and we cannot over- 

 look our obligation to Smith whilst we reverence the work of 

 his distinguished contemporary, Wollaston. 



Palaeontology, or the study of ancient life forms, stands some- 

 what in relation to geology as the science of archaeology does to 

 history, or as zoology and botany to physical geography. But, 

 whereas the investigator of recent living forms deals with entire 

 organisms and can study both their morphological and their 

 physiological history as well as their geographical range, the 

 palaeontologist has too often to deal with imperfect remains, 

 many of which have no exact modern representative, and has, in 

 consequence, to look for and seize upon minute characters for 

 hxs guidance, which the worker on recent forms would probably 



„lect as too trivial for even specific diagnosis. 



•The palaeontologist, if he would succeed, must in fact be a 



ined zoologist or botanist, as the case may be, and an accom- 

 plished geologist also ; such combinations of qualities like those 

 possessed by the earlier race of " naturalists " are less frequently 

 to be met with at the present day. They represent amongst us 

 the same class of men as the "general practitioner" does in 

 medicine ; they are the all-rovmd good scientific men, but 

 not " specialists." 



Biology, or the study of living things, has now become so 

 vast a field that everyone is compelled to take up some special 

 subject, and in striving to master it he makes his reputation as 

 an authority on this or that group of organisms. 



There is much to be said in favour of such a method of work- 

 ing, but I hold that everyone who so elects to spend his life 

 must first of all pass through a thorough grounding in general 

 biology, and should on no account take up special work until he 

 has mastered thoroughly the general principles of scientific 

 classification and the various types of organized beings, other- 

 wise he will be for ever viewing all Nature with distorted vision, 

 seeing, in fact, "men as trees walking." If as a student he 

 shall have been nurtured wholly on the anatomy of the sole, 

 all objects will be viewed from the stand-point of that one-sided 

 fish. If the cockroach has engrossed his youthful studies, all 

 nature will swarm with Periplaneta orietitalis. 



We have to guard against the starting of student-specialists. 



' Traces of fossils are said to have been met with in Donegal, and I have 

 just received evidence of Trilobites in the Upper Green Llanberis slates at 

 Penrhyn, hitherto considered unfossiliferous ! 



■hi s I 

 ^^aii 



They must begin by being " general practitioners" if they are 

 ever to do any good in the world of science, and after serving 

 their time in a museum or elsewhere, then by all means let each 

 follow his own " bent " and devote himself to some particular 

 group, as did Davidson to the Brachiopoda, to the exclusion of 

 all else. 



It is the absence of " all roundness " which has retarded more 

 than any other thing the constant interchange of ideas between 

 zoologists, botanists, and palaeontologists, without which science 

 languishes. Biologists as a body do not care to look at or study 

 fossils ; they see neither form nor beauty in the petrified fragments 

 of a plant or animal such as would induce them to study these 

 more closely, and they turn to the exquisitely perfect specimens 

 of recent objects in their cabinets with a sigh of relief. But 

 Nemesis is at hand created by our modern system of extreme 

 biological training. The student of to-day is averse to the 

 systematic work of both zoology and palaeontology in our 

 museums, and, technically inclined, craves for nothing so much 

 as to be allowed to embed some interesting embryo in paraffin 

 and cut it into 10,000 slices. 



As a consequence fur museums will suffer unless we can revive 

 amongst our students a taste for and a love of general natural 

 history ; such, we mean, as the taste for Nature which excited 

 the enthusiasm of Charles Kingsley and stimulated the zeal of 

 Charles Darwin. We cannot all sail round the world as did 

 Banks and Solander, Darwin, Huxley, Hooker, Wyville Thom- 

 son, Moseley, and so many other naturalists, though the mere 

 act of travelling has now become so ridiculously easy that our 

 own Association awoke one morning in Montreal, and may, for 

 aught we know, find itself some day in Sydney or Melbourne I 

 But we can fully appreciate Nature in a dredging expedition or 

 feel her influence on a moor or mountain, in a quarry or down a 

 mine. 



What we want for our students in these high-pressure days 

 are less frequent attendance in the examination room and a 

 more frequent examination of Nature in the field. Our profes- 

 sors must take their men more often afield, and show them how 

 to collect specimens and familiarize them with the aspects of 

 natural objects as seen 'without microscopes, and they will return 

 to their studies with far better and keener eyesight after their 

 own macroscopic vision has been enlarged by contact with Nr.ture. 



Whoever then takes up the study of fossils must also be well 

 acquainted with the structure of living animals and plants ; he 

 may also be expected to go on adding to his store of biological 

 knowledge — but as some division of labour is absolutely essen- 

 tial, the man who pursues palaeontological research must be 

 prepared to concentrate all his energies to the elucidation of 

 these extinct organisms, studying, but not occupying himself in 

 describing, recent forms. 



In order, however, to work satisfactorily at any particular 

 group of extinct organisms', his eyes and his understanding must 

 go through a long and careful training before he will be able to 

 interpret correctly the appearances presented by the specimen 

 before him, and to avoid|^the fallacies by which he is liable to be 

 misled, arising out of the necessarily imperfect materials and 

 their diff'erent modes of preservation in the matrix. 



He must learn to distinguish between a suture and a fracture, 

 and to know when a specimen has been distorted by cleavage or 

 other mechanical cause, or altered by mere difi'erence of mine- 

 ralization. Such deceptive appearances have too often led to 

 the multiplication of species, and even the creation of spurious 

 genera. 



Thus occupied in the investigation of ancient life forms, he 

 will in truth be only writing the first chapters on the botany or 

 the zoology of the earth, and whilst his carefully obtained 

 results are of the greatest importance to the speculations and 

 conclusions of the geologist they are equally essential to and a 

 part of biological science. 



My friend Dr. Traquair has recently thu-; expressed, in rela- 

 tion to his own subject, what I have attempted to make more 

 general : — "The man who satisfactorily investigates the structure 

 or determines the systematic position of a fish or xt\>\.\\Q preserved 

 in stone is as much a zoologist as he who describes a similar 

 crealure preserved in spirits, though with this difference, that the 

 former task is in some points rather the more difficult, seeing that 

 we have only the hard parts to go upon, and these generally in a 

 crushed, fragmentary, or scattered condition. And," he adds, 

 " without a genuine interest in, as well as a thorough knowledge 

 of, recent biolo^jy, no one can hope to produce work of any value 

 in palaeontology." 



