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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIX. No. 1002 



with a comparatively brief study of the 

 corresponding systems in demonstration 

 specimens of the other forms, will give him 

 the necessary experience, knowledge and 

 perspective to serve the full educative value 

 of the work? 



But does this advocacy of retaining the 

 old standbys carry with it the corollary 

 that they are to be taught in the same old 

 way, from the same old malodorous speci- 

 mens, and from the same old standpoint? 

 By no means. There is such a thing as let- 

 ting nearly all of the newer fields enter into 

 the traditional courses to vitalize and il- 

 lumine them while at the same time retain- 

 ing their valuable disciplinary and informa- 

 tional features. "We need not replace or 

 dilute, but rather compress more of value 

 into these courses by insisting on ecological 

 and physiological along with the morpho- 

 logical and evolutionary interpretations. 

 A frog, for example, is interesting enough 

 as a piece of architecture, but it becomes 

 many times more interesting when we ad- 

 vance to its interpretation as a machine 

 constructed for the performance of a wide 

 range of life activities. When the student 

 examines our selected types of animal ma- 

 chines in the laboratory he should be made 

 to realize that he is not only to interpret 

 their respective structures as so many in- 

 tergradients in an evolutionary series, but 

 that he is also to explain the mechanism in 

 each case in terms of function and adjust- 

 ment to environment. What a given struc- 

 ture accomplishes and how it does it, what 

 its efficiency is as compared with other 

 types, is of fully as great importance as 

 how, from the evolutionary point of view, 

 this or that organ has advanced or 

 regressed over the corresponding one in 

 some other animal. Omit either kind of in- 

 terpretation and the student has been de- 

 prived of valuable insight that he might 

 have had with very little additional effort. 



It may seem banal even to call attention to 

 this obvious fact, but visit the average lab- 

 oratory or look into the laboratory manuals 

 in common use and one can not but feel 

 that this evident fact has been almost en- 

 tirely ignored. 



I think there is a nearly universal feel- 

 ing to-day that we have been too closely 

 wedded to structure and have wrongly di- 

 vorced it from function and environmental 

 adjustment; our convictions, however, find 

 but tardy expression in our manuals and 

 laboratory directions. Part of this situa- 

 tion is undoubtedly due to the inertia of 

 routine. It is much easier to realize that 

 another system is better than actively to 

 break with traditional texts and guides 

 and rearrange our work in harmony with 

 our new ideals. 



Supposing that I had a free hand to ar- 

 range a curriculum for a zoological depart- 

 ment according to my own feeling of what 

 would turn out a well-balanced student to 

 undertake graduate work or to become a 

 teacher in secondary work, I should plan 

 about as follows: a two-semester course in 

 elementary zoology of five credit hours per 

 semester; a one-semester course each in 

 invertebrate zoology, comparative organol- 

 ogy of vertebrates, embryology and histol- 

 ogy, omitting, if anything, the histology. 

 Into all of these I would inject as much of 

 the living animal and of experimental proc- 

 esses and interpretations as was at all prac- 

 ticable; that is, I would have these funda- 

 mental courses morphological but shot 

 through and through with interpretations 

 of functions and adjustments. 



Finally I should want to see offered such 

 additional courses in animal behavior, 

 ecology, cytology, experimental embryol- 

 ogy, general physiology, genetics and other 

 special subjects, as the abilities and tastes 

 of my departmental colleagues and myself 

 would warrant. 



