SHORT PAPERS 



PROFESSOR C. JUDSON HERRICK read a paper for DR. C. S. HERRICK of Gran- 

 ville, Ohio, on the " The Dynamic Character of Morphology." 



The speaker said in part: There is a price which any organism must pay for a 

 high degree of specialization in a single direction. The liver fluke of the sheep de- 

 pends for the perpetuation of its species upon a series of complicated adjustments 

 to various environments, the failure of any one of which is fatal. Such cases of 

 extreme adaptation are usually found only on the terminal twigs of the phyletic 

 tree, and it has come to be a biological truism that the main line of evolutionary 

 advance passes through the generalized types. 



Perhaps something similar holds true for scientific disciplines. There is certainly 

 danger that extreme development of any specialty may cut it off from the vital 

 relations with environing fields upon which its continued existence depends, and 

 the elaboration of a "pure morphology" is certainly not exempt from such a 

 danger. 



But we have only to be true to our own traditions to enable us to retain our 

 place in the growing axis of biological progress. Anatomy, out of which morpho- 

 logy grew up, belongs to the most static group of the descriptive sciences. But 

 morphology is not the description of form; it is the explanation of form, and 

 from its inception has been quickened by genetic and functional motives. 



Morphology is one of the most dynamic of all the sciences; from the start it 

 has been morphogenesis, and the key to the problems of structure is behavior. To 

 draw another illustration from my own specialty, comparative neurology and' 

 comparative psychology have joined hands in wedlock from which we trust there 

 is henceforth no divorce, and we trust not without hope of offspring. 



So long as morphologists have sufficient breadth of view to assimilate the 

 relevant data from all other sciences, there is small danger of our science becoming 

 specialized to death, however minute may be the subdivision of our problems and 

 however extreme may be the refinements of our methods. But isolate morphology, 

 and it will perish. 



The present problem of our specialty, therefore (if we may single out one as 

 preeminent), is, as it always has been, the relation of morphology to other sciences. 



PROFESSOR J. G. NEEDHAM, of Lake Forest University, presented a paper on 

 "The Contribution of Animal Morphology to Education," in which the speaker 

 said in part: 



Two phenomena of great importance accompanied the early development of; 

 animal morphology: 



(1) The general recognition of the principle of evolution. 



(2) The general introduction of the laboratory method in zoSlogy. 



The first profoundly affected every department of human knowledge: the 

 second profoundly influenced the development of every branch of biological 

 science. 



These were the necessary not accidental, nor even incidental accompani- 

 ments of the development of animal morphology : for when the theory of natural 

 selection offered the first satisfactory explanation of a possible method of evolution 

 zoologists were quick to recognize that the facts of the structure and develop- 

 ment of animals offered a ready means of testing its validity. The distinguished 

 comparative anatomists of the first half of the nineteenth century, and the rising 

 school of embryologists, had prepared the way: and the early tnorphologist found 



