86 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



voting their time to explorations and descriptive natural history, 

 and their work depreciated, as being of a character beneath the 

 dignity of the biologists of to-day. 



" The zoological science of the country," said the president of 

 the Natural History Section of the American Association a few 

 years since, "-presents itself in two distinct periods: The first 

 period may be recognized as embracing the lowest stages of the 

 science ; it included, among others, a class of men who busied 

 themselves in taking an inventory of the animals of the country, 

 an important and necessary w r ork to be compared to that of the 

 hewers and diggers who first settle a new country, but in their 

 work demanded no deep knowledge or breadth of view." 



It is quite unnecessary to defend systematic zoology from such 

 slurs as this, nor do I believe that the writer quoted would really 

 defend the ideas which his words seem to convey, although, as 

 Professor Judd has regretfully confessed in his recent address 

 before the Geological Society of London, systematic zoologists 

 and botanists have become somewhat rare and out of fashion in 

 Europe in modern times. 



The best vindication of the wisdom of our early writers will 

 be, I think, the presentation of a counter-quotation from another 

 presidential address, that of the venerable Dr. Bentham before 

 the Linnaean Society of London, in 1867: 



"It is scarcely half a century," wrote Bentham, "since our 

 American brethren applied themselves in earnest to the in- 

 vestigation of the natural productions and physical condition of 

 their vast continent ; their progress, especially during the latter 

 half of that period, had been very rapid until the outbreak of the 

 recent war, so deplorable in its effects in the interests of science 

 as well as on the material prosperity of their country. The pe- 

 culiar condition of the North American Continent requires im- 

 peratively that its physical and biological statistics should be ac- 

 curately collected and authentically recorded, and that this should 

 be speedily done. It is more than any country, except our Aus- 

 tralian colonies, in a state of transition. Vast tracts of land are 

 still in what may be called almost a primitive state, unmodified 

 by the effects of civilization, uninhabited, or tenanted only by the 

 remnants of ancient tribes, whose unsettled life never exercised 



