380 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIV. No. 1133 



they are now receiving, and that they should 

 be conserved and utilized to a fuller extent. 

 Joseph Grinnell, 

 Tracy I. Storer 

 University of California 



THE REVIVAL OF INTEREST IN BIRD 



ANATOMY AT THE UNITED STATES 



NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Very well do I remember when the founda- 

 tion was laid for a department of comparative 

 anatomy at the United States National Mu- 

 seum. It took place some time along in the 

 early eighties, when Professor Baird's splendid 

 regime was at its height and zoological work 

 was at its best at the Smithsonian Institution. 

 My early papers on the osteology of birds had 

 appeared in Hayden's Twelfth Annual of the 

 U. S. Geological and Geographical Survey of 

 the Territories, and, owing to a fulfilment of 

 a promise made by the then surgeon-general 

 of the army, I found myself in the position of 

 curator of the department of comparative 

 anatomy at the old Army Medical Museum on 

 Tenth Street in "Washington. Naturally, I de- 

 sired to follow up my work on the osteology of 

 birds and upon vertebrate anatomy generally. 

 This impulse led me to obtain Professor 

 Baird's permission to examine what the col- 

 lections at the National Museum contained in 

 the way of material for descriptive purposes, 

 and to look into the matter of the possibility 

 of publishing researches along such lines. 



Professor Baird was a man who took an in- 

 tense personal interest in the labor of all his 

 curators, and it was his habit every day, when 

 he could afford the time to do so, to make a 

 round of the institution for the purpose of en- 

 couraging them in their investigations and to 

 learn whether there was anything, in any par- 

 ticular case, that a curator needed to push his 

 investigations forward. He no sooner noticed 

 my interest in bird anatomy than he opened 

 up the way to make it count for science, and 

 for the advancement of work in that particular 

 field. He immediately established a base for 

 such operations by founding a new position 

 for those not on the regular museum staff, but 



who were devoting a large share of their time 

 to scientific investigation, with the view of 

 publishing the results of their studies. The 

 late distinguished Dr. Theodore Nicholas Gill 

 and myself were the first two zoologists ap- 

 pointed by Professor Baird to become co-work- 

 ers under him as " associates in zoology " on 

 the staff of the institution. Shortly after this 

 event, I undertook to examine the collection 

 there of such material as illustrated the 

 morphology of birds. The alcoholic collection 

 contained many specimens of great value; but 

 what interested me most at that time was the 

 collection of bird skeletons. This consisted 

 of a very remarkable, not to say heterogene- 

 ous, lot of avian skeletons, none of which were 

 scientifically prepared. Many were roughed 

 out; a large array of them had been cleaned 

 up by the " sand fleas " of the seas that 

 wash our Alaskan possessions, and, finally, 

 not a few of them were sterna of birds saved 

 by bird collectors all over the country while 

 skinning specimens for their collections. To 

 show how valuable some parts of the material 

 were, I may say that, in one little pasteboard 

 box, I found the original chicken skulls used 

 by Charles Darwin in Volume One of his 

 " Animals and Plants Under Domestication " 

 (Figs. 34, 35 and 36), they evidently having 

 been presented to the Smithsonian either by 

 himself or by Mr. Tegetmeier. (How long 

 they had been in that little box I do not 

 know; at this writing they have been placed 

 in a special case in one of the exhibition halls 

 of the new National Museum!) 



A great mass of these skeletons had been 

 collected by our northern explorers, as Dall, 

 Elliott, Bean, Nelson, Turner and others, and 

 were in a fairly good condition. All this ma- 

 terial was in " original packages," that is, in 

 any old receptacle the collector could lay his 

 hands upon in the field — chiefly empty cigar- 

 boxes, all sorts of pasteboard boxes, boxes that 

 had held ammunition for collectors, etc. All 

 had been stored away and was covered with the 

 dust of time. However, I gave the lot a pre- 

 liminary going over, and Professor Baird 

 promptly assigned to my department — the de- 

 partment of comparative anatomy — an old 



