Januakt 5, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



11 



cumulation of facts is only the beginning; 

 that it is only laying the foundation on 

 which the man of high ability must rear 

 the superstructure. I also mean that from 

 now on it is essential to recognize that the 

 best scientific men must largely work in the 

 great out-of-doors laboratory of nature. It 

 is only such out-doors work which will give 

 us the chance to interpret aright the labo- 

 ratory observations. 



In the New York State Museum Bulletin, 

 published last July, there are pictures of 

 two birds, once common in America, now 

 totally extinct. One is the passenger 

 pigeon and the other the Labrador duck. 

 The passenger pigeon formerly existed in 

 this state in millions, and the Labrador 

 duck was common off the coast. The pas- 

 senger pigeon has been exterminated 

 through sheer brutal, reckless, and largely 

 wanton, slaughter, by our so-called civilized 

 people. The Labrador duck became ex- 

 tinct from causes of which we are abso- 

 lutely ignorant. There are plenty of 

 stuffed specimens of both in museums. But 

 in the ease of neither do these stuffed speci- 

 mens throw any real light on the birds' 

 life history. As regards the Labrador 

 duck, we shall in all probability never 

 know the particulars of its life history, nor 

 the causes of its sudden extinction. As re- 

 gards the passenger pigeon, in its physical 

 structure (which in its essentials is strik- 

 ingly like that of our common mourning 

 dove) there is nothing which would give the 

 least hint of its extraordinary habits, of 

 the innumerable myriads in which it moved 

 fitfully hither and thither over the land, 

 and of the enormous extent of its shifting 

 nesting sites. There is now no other bird 

 in the world with such habits; and the 

 stuffed specimens that remain of it do not, 

 all put together, begin to equal in value the 

 written records dealing with it in such old- 

 style natural histories as those of Wilson 



and Audubon. There are many points in 

 its life's history which are still obscure, 

 and these points are obscure chiefly because 

 so few of the many ornithologists, who 

 abounded in this country at the time of its 

 extinction, had any idea that their closet 

 work in museums was of no consequence 

 whatever compared to a thorough and care- 

 ful life study of the passenger pigeon. The 

 extinction of the passenger pigeon is a blot 

 on our civilization (and let me remai'k 

 parenthetically that every society of this 

 kind should be a focus of effort to prevent 

 any of the birds we still have from follow- 

 ing in the wake of the passenger pigeon) ; 

 but, inasmuch as it is extinct, it is well for 

 us to remember that we owe an incalculable 

 debt to the observers who have left for us 

 a record of its life history, whereas we owe 

 only a very small and easily calculated 

 debt to those who merely collected speci- 

 mens of it for their collections. 



Let the scientific man realize that he 

 must be a good first-hand observer of wild 

 things in their native haunts, if he is to 

 stand in the first rank of his profession. 

 Let him also remember that it is his busi- 

 ness to write well! Of course, he can not 

 be expected to write as well as John Bur- 

 roughs ; but he ought to have writings like 

 those of John Burroughs before him, to rep- 

 cesent the ideal toward which he strives. Let 

 him strive to do original work, the work of 

 original productive scientific scholarship. 



The New York Zoological Park, under 

 the guidance of Dr. Hornaday, the Ameri- 

 can Museum of Natural History in New 

 York, under the guidance of Mr. Osborn 

 and Mr. Chapman, have furnished models 

 in this matter. The three gentlemen named 

 have done original jDroductive scientific 

 work of the highest value, at the same time 

 that they have in every way popularized — 

 not cheapened ! — science, and made the 

 present and the past life history of this 



