MUSEUMS AND RESEARCH 67 



science, have to be written about them for publication. This 

 work is endless, for each hitherto undescribed species to some 

 extent modifies our conception of the relationships of those 

 already known and may demand a reclassification of the 

 genus to which it belongs. 



Now the question that will at once occur to you is this : 

 What is the good of this museum work ? Are the systematic 

 zoologists and their systematically arranged collections of 

 any use ? I will try to answer this by showing, firstly, the 

 relation of systematic zoology to zoology generally ; secondly, 

 the utilitarian value of systematic zoology, and thirdly, its 

 importance for philosophical zoology. 



First, then, as to the relation of systematic zoology to 

 zoology generally. The systematic zoologist seems to me to 

 stand midway between the anatomist, who studies the struc- 

 ture of some particular type or of some organ or group of 

 organs, and the biometrician, who makes a statistical study 

 of the variation of a species on large numbers of individuals. 



The systematist is himself an anatomist of a sort, but he 

 takes a wide and rapid survey of the structure of a group of 

 animals in order to seize on those characters that indicate 

 relationship and can be used in classification. Similarly the 

 systematic zoologist is, in a way, a biometrician ; but he 

 studies variation in a much larger number of species, and as 

 a rule on a much smaller number of individuals of any one 

 species, than the biometrician proper. The systematist thus 

 obtains results that may be important and suggestive for the 

 anatomist on the one hand and the biometrician on the 

 other, just as their work is valuable for him. 



Anatomy, systematic zoology and biometry are branches 

 of animal morphology, they grade into each other, the dis- 

 tinction between them is arbitrary and the connection between 

 them is direct and intimate. The relation of systematic 

 zoology to physiology is less direct ; but all zoologists are 

 dependent on the systematists and their systematically 

 arranged collections in one respect, that is, they must go to 

 them to get animals correctly named. The correct name of 

 an animal is a clue to all that is known or that has been 



