424 A CENTURY OF SCIENCE 



research, or individual chapters in the latest biological 

 text-books. Often the talent of the artist and the skill 

 of the taxidermist are cunningly combined to produce 

 most realistic bits of nature. 



The United States National Museum, the American 

 Museum of Natural History, the Field Columbian Museum 

 and the Museum of Comparative Zoology are among the 

 finest museums of the world, while many of the states, 

 cities, and universities maintain public museums as a 

 part of their educational systems. 



Systematic Zoology and Taxonomy, 



The work in systematic zoology is now mainly carried 

 on by specialists in relatively small groups of animals. 

 This is necessitated both by the increasingly large num- 

 ber of species known to science and by the completeness 

 and exactness with which species must now be denned. 

 The majority of systematic workers are now connected 

 with museums where the large collections furnish mate- 

 rial for comparative studies. 



Prominent in this field is the United States National 

 Museum, the publications of which are mainly taxonomic 

 and zoogeographic, and cover every group of organism. 

 The adequacy of this great museum for such studies 

 may be illustrated by the collection of mammals. This 

 museum has the types of 1135 of the 2138 forms (includ- 

 ing species and subspecies) of North American mammals 

 recognized in Miller's list, 4 and less than 200 forms lack 

 representatives among the 120,000 specimens of mam- 

 mals. Systematic monographs of several of the orders 

 of mammals have been published. 



Systematic study of the birds has brought the number 

 of species and subspecies known to inhabit North and 

 Middle America to above 3000. The most comprehen- 

 sive systematic treatise is the still incomplete report of 

 Bidgeway 5 of which seven large volumes have already 

 been .issued. 



On the reptiles, the most complete monograph is that 

 by Cope 6 entitled "The Crocodilians, Lizards and Snakes 

 of North America. " 



The Amphibia have also been studied by Cope, whose 



