204 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVII. No. 945 



perience with some animal. What teacher 

 has not been struck by the tenacity and 

 even accuracy with which students hold 

 the accounts of personal experiences and 

 the lessons drawn from them when their 

 minds were like quicksand for morpholog- 

 ical data ! 



But let us be honest with ourselves and 

 remind ourselves that most of our students 

 go out to give in miniature or in more or 

 less condensed form what we give them in 

 our laboratories and lecture rooms. The 

 kind of zoology to which the g'reat majority 

 of the coming generation is to be intro- 

 duced will be largely, if not altogether, de- 

 termined in our universities and colleges by 

 the men and women who constitute the 

 membership of Section F and affiliated so- 

 cieties. 



It should also be remembered that the 

 wider the circle of those interested in a sci- 

 ence the greater will be the appreciation of 

 the work and efforts of the investigators in 

 that field and the greater will be the possi- 

 bilities in every direction. To take thought 

 of service to the general public through our 

 general courses in zoology from the schools 

 to the colleges and universities and through 

 such natural avenues to the public as Sec- 

 tion P, is to indirectly but certainly in- 

 crease the appreciation and support of all 

 lines of zoological investigation and to give 

 the investigator, as well as the teacher, in 

 the field of zoology a more honored and 

 generously supported position. Conse- 

 quently, in view of the unique position I 

 have assigned to Section F it is natural for 

 me to bespeak a warmer interest in the sec- 

 tion and a sympathetic cooperation for the 

 officers. 



Before concluding my brief plea permit 

 me to protect myself against a possible mis- 

 understanding. My plea is for Section F 

 and the recognition of a need which I feel 

 most of us do not recognize in service. In 



the presentation of this need and oppor- 

 tunity I am not decrying our present type 

 of university course in general zoology. 

 Neither do I advocate nor believe in re- 

 placing the usual university course in gen- 

 eral zoology by a so-called old-fashioned 

 natural history course or what some of the 

 younger protestors are pleased to call ecol- 

 ogy. No, I believe in what we may call the 

 morphological course illuminated with a 

 common-sense presentation of the machine 

 in action and in its becoming. A critical 

 examination of conditions I think will dis- 

 close as a fact that the protesting zoologists 

 are misplacing their criticisms. The gen- 

 eral dissatisfaction we hear about (which 

 probably is not as general as some think it 

 is) is not so much a result of the character 

 of the courses offered as it is of the quality 

 of our students. The courses, as a rule, are 

 fit and proper and not a bit too exacting 

 for a student of university caliber. But 

 many of onr students are not of university 

 caliber in reference to zoology. That is the 

 weak link in the chain. Our students 

 should come from the high schools, pre- 

 paratory schools and minor colleges with a 

 better knowledge of animals as living indi- 

 viduals and with more knowledge of the 

 physical sciences. But many of them come 

 without any of this knowledge or with the 

 background of a nature-study coui-se often 

 worse than nothing. 



To crowd out of the university the exact- 

 ing morphological course with a gossipy 

 informational course of the hunter and 

 fisherman and superficial poet is to replace 

 sound learning and the development of 

 mental fiber and capacity with sentimental- 

 ity and undifferentiated — aye, undifferen- 

 tiable protoplasm in the brain. We must 

 not lower our standards and ideals to those 

 of the vaudeville nor those of the moving 

 picture shows nor those of the newspapers 

 and current novels, but we must insist 



