62 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



give verisimilitude to an ' otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.' 

 The distinction between Neontology and Palaeontology is fading ; and with 

 its passing all other taxonomic boundaries grow dim. 



There is, however, a real difference in the two attitudes towards classi- 

 fication, and a difficulty in correlating them. This is due to the vastly 

 greater series of characters possessed by a living creature compared with 

 the small number that persist after its death. Zoologists and botanists 

 can study ontology and ontogeny, whereas the student of fossils must be 

 content with partial morphology and morphogeny. Fortunately, in the 

 nature of things, the various organs of an organism are so intimately 

 related that any one of them may give presumptive indications of the 

 rest ; but this is not invariably true, and scarcely ever convincing. There 

 is room between the valves of a Pelecypod shell for any or all of the 

 anatomical peculiarities on which Pelecypods are classified, and very 

 little likelihood that the shell will show which of the many possibilities 

 it actually enclosed. This difficulty applies in the case of all shell-bearing 

 organisms ; it is less acute where skeletal structures are concerned. 

 We do not know how many gills the Ammonites had, and so their true 

 position among the Cephalopoda is unproved ; but we do know the 

 disposition of the water-vessels in fossil Echinoderms, and the course of 

 blood-vessels and cranial nerves in extinct Vertebrates. 



Most of the characters regarded as of specific importance in modern 

 types are superficial. They are real enough, but only skin-deep. The 

 colour of feathers, the hairiness of foliage, or the proportions and 

 ornament of shells, may serve to differentiate between forms that, though 

 otherwise structurally similar, are completely different in habits, distri- 

 bution and fertility. A palaeontologist can hope, therefore, to recognise 

 in fossil shells specific characters comparable with those so regarded by 

 neontologists. 



Generic characters, in so far as they can be defined, involve structural 

 differences of a more deep-seated nature. Most of them are revealed 

 only by dissection, and most are found among the softer tissues. Such 

 characters may often have a visible influence on skeletal structures, but 

 they rarely affect shells. In Echinoderms, Vertebrates and Plants it is 

 possible for a palaeontologist to distinguish sections that are virtually 

 equivalent to the neontologists' genera, and to follow consistently up into 

 higher groupings. 



We find, therefore, that a palaeoconchologist can classify shells speci- 

 fically, and usually no further ; while his colleague who deals with 

 skeletal structures can recognise ordinal and generic, but no smaller, 

 characters. In effect, a fossil shell is naturally recognised as a species, and 

 arbitrarily placed in a genus ; while a fossil skeleton may be naturally 

 classed into a genus, and cannot properly be described specifically. That 

 it is usually so described upsets the balance of classification ; but since 

 taxonomy is at best an artificial scheme, the trouble is not serious so long 

 as it is realised. 



Whatever may be the requirements of his stratigraphical colleagues, 

 a biological palaeontologist is less concerned with genera and species than 

 with series and trends. His interest lies in the progressive modification 



