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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LI. No. 1308 



so well suited to studies of this kind as are 

 tlie pigeons. The elaborate courtship, the 

 fidelity of the individuals to each other, the 

 mating and nesting habits, the part taken by 

 the female and the male in incubation, the 

 feeding instinct of old and young, the wean- 

 ing and the rythmic sequence of broods offer 

 a fascinating opportunity to the student of 

 animal behavior. Whitman obviously had in 

 view a large program toward the accomplish- 

 ment of which he had progressed much fur- 

 ther that these notes indicate. Some of the 

 lines of work opened up by him have been 

 pursued successfully by his students Pro- 

 fessor Craig and Dr. Eiddle, but according to 

 their statement his knowledge far outstripped 

 that of any other observer in this field. 

 The many observations here recorded are 

 clearly only the material out of which, in 

 time, he had expected to link up the evolution 

 of instincts with the study of the evolution of 

 structure and color. "If Professor Whitman 

 had completed his work, he would have pro- 

 duced an extensive treatise on the phylogney 

 of the pigeon group. . . . The voices and the 

 behavior of the various species would have 

 been used, like the color patterns, to throw 

 light on the relationships, derivation and 

 method of origin of pigeon species " (Craig 

 and Riddle). According to Carr, Whitman 

 developed " what one may term an ortho- 

 genetic conception of instinctive development. 

 Instincts are not novel and unique construc- 

 tions which spring, without ancestry, into be- 

 ing; rather each new instinct is but a slight 

 modification or organization of tendencies al- 

 ready in existence." When one sees how vital 

 the instincts are for the existence of the 

 species it is probable that however the changes 

 originated the advances would most probably 

 be those involving only slight modifications of 

 intincts already in action. 



The Carnegie Institution and equally Dr. 

 Eiddle are to be sincerely congratulated on 

 having preserved for American zoologists the 

 last great work of Whitman. The wonderful 

 colored pictures, almost entirely the work of 

 the Japanese artist Hyashi, are marvels of 

 beauty and accuracy, and stand for the 

 minute attention that Whitman demanded at 



every stage of his work. The same attention 

 to detail is shown in Whitman's early work 

 on cell-lineage, on the leeches of Japan, and 

 on the embryology of fishes, and explains in 

 part his far reaching influence on American 

 zoologists. It is rare to find combined such 

 delicacy in treatment of detail with the sweep 

 of philosophical interpretation of which Whit- 

 man was equally master. 



Whitman stood at the parting of the ways. 

 We may regret that he did not enter into the 

 new era that even at that time was opening 

 up its far reaching vistas, but this need not 

 blind us to the fine example he set — an ex- 

 ample of unworldly devotion and absorption 

 in his work, of self-criticism made possible by 

 simplicity and honesty of character, of fair- 

 ness that led him to appreciate and to state 

 accurately and kindly the opinions of others 

 with whom he disagreed heartily. 



T. H. Morgan 



Columbia TJNnrEKsiTY 



A PALEONTOLOGIC REVIVAL AT 



YALE UNIVERSITY 

 Othniel Charles Marsh was appointed pro- 

 fessor of paleontology at Tale in 1866, this be- 

 ing the first time such a chair was established 

 at any university He was unquestionably one 

 of America's leading men of science, and in 

 vertebrate paleontology "he stood without a 

 peer." He had collected fossils long before his 

 graduation from Yale in 1860, and after taking 

 the doctorate at Heidelberg, he became deeply 

 interested in the wonderful array of extinct 

 vertebrates that the TJ. S. Geological and Geo- 

 graphical Survey of the Territories was finding 

 in the " bad lands " of Nebraska. In the mean- 

 time, his uncle, George Peabody, had founded 

 at Yale the Peabody Museum of Natural His- 

 tory, though the building was not erected until 

 1875. Marsh saw the great western wilderness 

 for the first time in 1868, going over the Union 

 Pacific into Nebraska and Wyoming. In 1870 

 he fitted out the first Yale College Scientific 

 Expedition, and took west with him twelve 

 enthusiastic students. Prom this time the 

 flood of boxes shipped to the university grew 

 annually greater and greater. In 1899 Pro- 



