550 Prof. 0. C. Marsh — The Value of Ti/j^e- Specimens. 



wliicli the main characters are not known, or not placed on record. 

 A vertebra of a reptile or the tooth of a maranial, if perfect and 

 characteristic, may form a type that will be distinctive enough for 

 the present requirements of the investigatoi*. What the future may 

 demand, will depend upon the advance of knowledge in that branch 

 of science. 



In the choice of specimens worthy of being types, I can only 

 suggest a course that seems to me the proper one. I believe 

 experience has already shown that to make types of incomplete or 

 lancharacteristic specimens is seldom of permanent advantage to an 

 author, and almost always a lasting injury to the branch of science he 

 represents. There are more good specimens waiting to be found 

 than any naturalist can possibly describe, and one such specimen is 

 worth many of inferior grade. 



I may perhaps be permitted to mention in this connection my 

 own experience in the matter of type-specimens. As a student in 

 Germany, years ago, I had my attention called particularly to this 

 subject, and was then strongly impressed with the importance of 

 using only good specimens for first descriptions. This rule I have 

 endeavoured to follow. My researches, especially in western North 

 America, have resulted in the discovery of more than one thousand 

 new species of extinct vertebrates, and of these I have described 

 about five hundred. Had I been satisfied to use inferior specimens 

 as types, I might have increased the number by one-half at least. 



No small part of the present literature of the paleeontology of 

 vertebrates is based on names applied to fragments, and a long 

 period of more accurate work will be required before these can be 

 rejected or incorporated into the digested knowledge of the subject. 

 I recall one collection of types of extinct vertebrates, published in 

 a single volume, and near a hundred in number, the greater part 

 of which are uncharacteristic fragments, well fitted to burden science 

 for all time with a legacy of uncertainty and doubt. Such work is 

 a positive discouragement to all future investigators in the same 

 field, and its value to science may well be questioned. 



The necessity of greater care in selecting type-specimens, in 

 Palaeontology at least, needs no argument to any student of the 

 science who has done sufficient original work to appreciate the 

 increasing difficulties of accurate investigation. To those who have 

 had less experience, a word of warning, I trust, will not be in vain. 



3. The Preservation of Type- Specimens. 



The careful preservation of their own tjpe-specimens is a sacred 

 duty on the part of all original investigators, and hardly less so 

 of those who are the custodians of such invaluable evidence of the 

 progress of natural science. 



Local museums, as a rule, are less desirable repositories of type- 

 specimens than private collections, since tlie former usually can have 

 little hope of permanent care, while the latter, if important, have 

 a fair chance, by gift or purchase, of becoming part of a large 

 endowed museum, where those in control are more likely to 

 appreciate the importance of types, and carefully preserve them. 



