Febkuaey 23, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



291 



raphy— and nearly three hundred pen-and- 

 ink sketches in the text. 



No expense or care was spared in the 

 execution of the work; some thirty scien- 

 tific men and art specialists, both in Europe 

 and in America, were engaged to contribute 

 their views upon various aspects of the 

 whole subject; and the illustrations were 

 prepared in the finest manner possible, 

 Chinese and Japanese artists being em- 

 ployed to execute many of them, and color 

 experts being freely consulted, under the 

 supervision of Mr. Bishop himself. The 

 catalogue has, moreover, a special value 

 from the fact that all the scientific investi- 

 gations described therein were made upon 

 material taken from the specimens in the 

 collection itself. 



This whole work, from its inception by 

 Mr. Bishop in 1886 to the final distribution 

 of the volumes, has required about twenty 

 years, and was entirely planned and 

 thought out by him. It is a cause of much 

 satisfaction that the enterprise has been so 

 fully and successfully completed along the 

 lines which he laid down; but it is also a 

 source of profound regret that he could 

 not himself have lived to witness its final 

 accomplishment. The whole cost has been 

 met by the liberality of Mr. Bishop's pro- 

 vision, carried out by the care and thought- 

 fulness of his executors. 



Attendance at the meetings of the section 

 was discouragingly small, there being but 

 seven geologists present during the whole 

 time of the association meeting, and two of 

 these did not arrive until after the ad- 

 journment of the section. 



The foregoing account of the meeting 

 has been prepared from the full notes kept 

 by the secretary pro tern. 



Edmund Otis Hovey, 



Secretary. 



American Museum op Natural History. 



MORPHOLOGY AND PHYLOGENY.^ 

 We are at the present time passing 

 through a season of morphological thaw. 

 The doctrine of definite and fixed morpho- 

 logical types has been somewhat slower 

 than that of the fixity of species, in melting 

 under the fierce light, which beats on all 

 scientific generalizations ; but its disappear- 

 ance has not been less final or less complete. 

 This breaking up of the ice of morpholog- 

 ical formalism, which has so long needlessly 

 restrained the course of morphological and 

 phylogenetie research, is not altogether 

 unattended with the dangers which accom- 

 pany the opening of a new spring. On the 

 part of some there is fear or even hope, 

 that not only the ice, but the banks of the 

 river as well, will be swept away by the 

 raging flood. There is, however, no more 

 need to dread the final result for phylog- 

 eny, than there was to fear the disappear- 

 ance of the doctrine of fixity of species, 

 half a century ago, as subversive to taxon7 

 omy. On the contrary, we may reasonably 

 expect that, as in the case of the sister 

 science, morphology and phylogeny will in 

 the long run vastly benefit by getting rid 

 of the constraint of mere formalism. 



It is now more than a generation since 

 any considerable number of biologists has 

 believed that species were created once and 

 for all, and unchangeable until they became 

 extinct. At the present time this doctrine 

 enjoys scarcely even a pagan persistence in 

 some of our more belated schools of learn- 

 ing. Whatever may be our individual 

 views in regard to the doctrine of descent 

 or evolution, we are in general agreed that 

 species are derived by modification and 

 change from previous species and not by a 

 special creative fiat. This conclusion, as 

 Darwin pointed out many years ago, in 

 his 'Origin of Species,' is at bottom a mor- 



' Presidential address delivered before the So- 

 ciety for Plant Morphology, Ann Arbor, December 

 29, 1905. 



