COMPARATIVE ANATOMY AND GENERAL BIOLOGY 325 



the ambition of a fellow worker in morphology or taxonomy, for 

 example, by such questions as "who cares for such matters? " 

 Attitudes of mind like this do harm, lots of harm. They harm in- 

 dividuals, and they harm science. They are off the same piece with 

 pathies in medicine; and "pathies" are bad everywhere. Scientific 

 work done in the " pathy " spirit is pretty sure to be top-heavy and 

 lop-sided; and the scientific man who cultivates a piece of scientific 

 ground in this spirit is quite sure to run off and leave it for some 

 other new piece before he has really found what it will produce. 

 It seems as though we American biologists are rather more given 

 to fashion in our scientific tastes than are those of other nations, 

 though the frailty is by no means a national trait. Think how the 

 phylogeny fashion prevailed a decade and a half ago, and note how 

 strange and alone one looks now who dares be found busying him- 

 self with questions in this field. One might about as well be seen 

 at an evening ball in a Norfolk jacket as to venture to touch a ques- 

 tion of phylogeny in the presence of an up-to-date biological com- 

 pany. And yet who would soberly contend that problems in this field 

 are without importance, or are all solved, or are insoluble? And 

 the so-called morphological method, why had it such vogue some 

 years ago, and why is it so ignored now? What has become of 

 cell-lineage? Have all the extremely interesting questions that were 

 attracting so much good work a few brief years ago been settled? 

 Why do we hear only an occasional voice from this realm now? 

 How long will it be before the field of regeneration, now so bustling 

 with life, shall be as lone as the temples of Psestums? Judging from 

 history, long before its problems have been solved. How long will 

 biometry remain in its present high favor? Let us sincerely hope 

 that it will for many and many a decade; while, however, we must 

 expect, relying on history as a guide, that it will soon have to take its 

 place in the garret with the many other out-of-date garments. 1 The 

 burden of my complaining is not at all that we strike out on new 

 lines of work and new methods, and this with enthusiasm and 

 vigor; but that we do this with too much narrowness, with too 

 much contempt for the older problems and methods, and, above 

 all, that \ve go off and leave them for still newer things before they 

 have been thoroughly tried out. Not only breadth of training, 

 but as well breadth of spirit, is an imperative demand in any science. 

 With benediction on the preached word, we may turn now to com- 

 parative anatomy. 



One can hardly take up seriously such a question as that of the 

 place comparative anatomy holds now, and in the future is likely 



1 Since my arrival in St. Louis, I have been told by an American acquaintance 

 recently returned from Europe that a well-known leader of a school opened a few 

 months ago is expressing the view that " biology ought to be fumigated of statist- 

 ical method." 



