Maech 4, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



373 



the forms which to-day occupy a certain 

 region are descended directly from those 

 whose bones we find in the strata under- 

 neath them, or have originated in some far 

 distant continent from ancestors indigenous 

 there, we meet again a distressing amount 

 of uncertainty and diversity of opinion. 

 And if we inquire into the reason for all 

 this controversy, this lack of agreement 

 among biologists, one cause stands pre- 

 ' eminently forth as responsible, viz., insuffi- 

 cient and defective records! 



Thirty or forty years ago the biologists, 

 with an almost childish faith, believed that 

 they had gathered all the material that was 

 to be had, and that they would exhaiist 

 the supply of facts in a very few 3^ears. 

 Europe, according to them, was thoroughly 

 explored, the records were complete ; north- 

 ern Asia had just been covered by the 

 magnificent expeditions of Middendorff, 

 Schrenck, Eadde and others; the biotic 

 secrets of North America were divulged in 

 the Pacific Railroad reports, the Mexican 

 Boundary reports, the reports of the expe- 

 dition west of the 100th meridian, and of 

 the survey of the territories. They con- 

 ceded that a few more species might be 

 expected to turn up in the interior of 

 Africa, but these, it was thought, would not 

 be able to alter conclusions materially. 

 And so they proceeded to speculate and 

 generalize, to pull biology out of the mire 

 of mere recording and gathering of facts 

 into the regions of real science. But un- 

 fortunately, although theories and hypoth- 

 eses multiplied, they nearly all led in dif- 

 ferent directions, and each philosopher 

 came to results at variance with those of 

 the others, according to the kind of material 

 or the portion of the record he happened 

 to get hold of. 



Far be it from me to speak lightly either 

 of the records and material gathered by 

 the men of that generation, or of their 

 generalizations. It was not their fault if 



the viltimate results have been disappoint- 

 ing. Many of their records are of perma- 

 nent value; a great deal of their material 

 still serves as foundation for our present 

 work; some of their conclusions and the- 

 ories have proven to be correct. Without 

 them we were not standing where we are 

 now. The fault lies with their successors 

 who considered the preliminary work fin- 

 ished and who failed to continue it sys- 

 tematically and symmetrically. 



Shortly after the period alluded to it be- 

 came painfully clear to biologists that the 

 amount of facts, material and records 

 which had been gathered was not only a 

 mere handful as to numbers, but even more 

 hopelessly defective as to accuracy and 

 minuteness of the data. With the opening 

 up of the world by means of improved 

 facilities of communication, the enormous 

 mass of new material representing unex- 

 pected forms in endless number fairly 

 swamped the systematic biologist diiring 

 his work of recording and describing. This 

 flood of new species and genera naturally 

 affected the scientists of Europe most, as 

 it accumulated in the museums of countries 

 which not only previously had colonial pos- 

 sessions all over the world, but now by the 

 division of Africa despoiled a whole big 

 continent of its most striking novelties. 

 The American biologists, on the other hand, 

 whose field was in nearly all cases limited 

 by the political boundaries of the United 

 States, were shut out from the rest of the 

 world and reduced to a more intensive cul- 

 tivation of their own area. The result has 

 been curious in more than one way. On 

 the one hand, our development became de- 

 fective, because we lost touch with the outer 

 world and so in a measure were left be- 

 hind ; while, on the other hand, we extended 

 the accurate, i. e., scientific, knowledge of 

 our own field far beyond that of the rest 

 of the world. 



This, then, is the standpoint we occupy 



