752 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLI. No. 1064 



marckians were in the land ; sturdy Ameri- 

 cans they were, who hardened their hearts 

 at ideas made in Germany. One evening, 

 I remember, we went over to the Marine 

 Biological Laboratory to hear a lecture by 

 Professor E. D. Cope. The lecture was on 

 some mechanical factors in evolution. Pro- 

 fessor Cope, the most scintillatingly bril- 

 liant American man of science that has yet 

 appeared, told us about the shapes of the 

 carpal bones in a number of extinct artio- 

 dactyles which he had been studying. He 

 illustrated his lecture with numerous 

 crayon sketches which he made while he 

 was talking. His conclusion was that these 

 bones owed their shape to the mechanical 

 effects of pressure and stress, and were thus 

 evidence of the inheritance of characters 

 that had become impressed on lines of de- 

 scent by the surroundings, and hence might 

 be said to prove the inheritance of acquired 

 characters. I recall that one of the young 

 men, upon our return to the Fish Commis- 

 sion laboratory, characterized Professor 

 Cope's lecture as puerile, which I did not 

 think then, nor do I think now, is exactly a 

 word that is needed to describe anything 

 which Professor Cope said or did in 1889. 

 It has been my fortune once and again 

 to hear more or less patronizing criticism 

 of the way time was spent in the work of 

 collecting and classifying the animal and 

 vegetable forms which inhabit the waters of 

 the "Woods Hole region. Doubtless the time 

 could have been better spent, but this re- 

 mark may be made with equal justice con- 

 cerning any sort of human endeavor. It 

 may not be amiss to say that whatever the 

 character of the publications of these earlier 

 workers, the conversations to which, as a 

 young man, I listened between such men as 

 Professors Baird, Gill, Verrill, Smith, 

 Goode, Eyder and Cope, contained nothing 

 about priority of names, and little upon 

 taxonomy in general, while they did abound 



in discussions of such matters as the habits 

 and distribution of animals, adaptation, 

 development, function, behavior and he- 

 redity. 



Looking back on the laboratory activities 

 of those days and comparing them with the 

 present with its varied application of the 

 sciences of chemistry and physics to the 

 study of the phenomena of life, the work 

 done here in the 80 's may seem narrow. 

 It should be remembered, however, that no 

 science has sprung at once into maturity. 

 The immediate problem before the Com- 

 mission of Pish and Fisheries was that of 

 acquiring all the knowledge obtainable of 

 the fishes of our coast and of their food and 

 environment. It is not conceivable that 

 this knowledge could have been gained in 

 any other way than by a study of the condi- 

 tions at first hand. Doubtless our knowl- 

 edge is to be vastly extended by those ex- 

 perimental methods whereby animals are 

 subjected to conditions which do not exist 

 in nature, but such investigations, however 

 valuable they may be in refining and ex- 

 tending our knowledge of life, would have 

 been as much out of place in the days of 

 Baird and Agassiz as the automobile and 

 the locomotive would have been in the for- 

 ests of this country 200 years ago. 



Those of us who breathed the serene 

 atmosphere of the days of Professor Baird, 

 and have continued work somewhat similar 

 to that which we began some three decades 

 ago, have inherited, I trust, some of his 

 kindly spirit that should enable one to 

 listen to criticism with equanimity and to 

 endure patronage without agitation of 

 mind. Thus one may dwell beside the road 

 and be a friend to the passing biological 

 pageant. So he could be a respectful on- 

 looker when, in 1898, he beheld the passing 

 show, brave with many colors; when new- 

 born ideas in biology must first be baptized 

 in corrosive sublimate and then decked in 



