324 COMPARATIVE ANATOMY 



co-workers are ever prone to forget that they in reality belong to 

 the same fold. 



Just here I must take exception to the notion, too widely current, 

 and sanctioned by the place given paleontology in the arrangement 

 of departments and sections for this Congress, that the science of 

 extinct animals and plants belongs to geology rather than to bio- 

 logy. Whatever else paleontology may be, it is first and foremost 

 a department of biology, and is one of its most distinctive and 

 important departments. And while I am in the business of crit- 

 icising the programme, I must mention another matter, less, how- 

 ever, in the way of fault-finding than for defining or explaining 

 my own attitude toward the topic to which I am assigned. In the 

 division of Biology we have sections of Embryology and Com- 

 parative Anatomy. This is in accord with the best views and the 

 best practice; but from my standpoint it is impossible to separate 

 the tw r o, and I cannot consent to discuss the relation of compara- 

 tive anatomy to biology, and limit myself to the narrower under- 

 standing of the term; i. e., to the conception that it has to do with 

 adult structure alone. I must treat it as extending to the later 

 stages of development at least. 



It may be remarked here that I do not count myself a profes- 

 sional comparative anatomist, but rather a zoologist. My working 

 interests are about as follows: comparative anatomy, in the sense 

 above indicated, as furnishing the tools; and general biology as 

 furnishing the standpoint and larger motive for my profession as 

 a zoologist. 



As a final preliminary to my task proper, I must preach a little. 

 This I do with reluctance, because for preaching, except by those 

 called and ordained to the business, I have little taste. But the need 

 being urgent, and the occasion opportune, I proceed, with at least a 

 show of boldness, to preach. The theme of my sermon is a plea for 

 greater catholicity of spirit among biologists. Would that we might 

 never again have hurled at us throne utterances, as it were, on the 

 all-sufficiency of such and such a new method of research; or of 

 the utter uselessness of such and such an old method; or, again, 

 on the all-absorbing importance of some newly found problem, and 

 the unimportance, even insipidity, of other old problems. True, the 

 biological domain is boundless, and the workers in it are human, and 

 hence narrowly limited in power of individual accomplishment. 

 But limitation in strength does not necessarily mean smallness of 

 spirit. 



Let not the guilt be on our heads (and by our I do not mean the 

 other fellows') of dissuading beginners from going into some particular 

 line of work, embryology or histology, for example, because "it is 

 dead," or there is "nothing more in it." And don't let us cocaine 



