934 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 835 



From Agassiz, all of the naturalists of the 

 old school of to-day, all the teachers and 

 investigators who have reached the sixty- 

 year mark or are soon to reach it. These 

 men, from Joseph Le Conte and David A. 

 Wells, of his first class, through Shaler, 

 "Wilder, Putnam, Alexander Agassiz, 

 Hartt, Baird, Walcott, Wliitman, Brooks, 

 Snow, Lyman, Clark, William James, 

 Faxon, Fewkes, Garman, down to Minot 

 and myself, the two youngest of the lot, as 

 I remember; Minot venerable already, ac- 

 cording to the Boston press. 



It is a characteristic of the men of the 

 old school that they formed schools, that 

 they were centers of attraction to the like- 

 minded wherever these might be. There 

 were no fellowships in those days whereby 

 men are hired to work under men they do 

 not care for and along lines which lead not 

 to the truth they love, but to a degree and a 

 career. We speak sometimes of the Agassiz 

 school of naturalists, the Gray school of 

 botanists, as in Germany ' ' die ganze Gegen- 

 baurische Schule" of anatomy, "die 

 Haeckelsche Schule" of biology. These 

 may be terms of praise or of opprobrium, 

 according to the degree of one's sympathy 

 with that school and its purposes. 



To belong to a school in this sense is to 

 share the inspiration of its leader. The 

 Gray school of botanists no longer places 

 the buttercup or the virgin's bower at the 

 head of the list of plants, as a typical 

 flower. Gray did this, but this is not an 

 essential in honoring Gray. They begin at 

 the bottom, Darwin-fashion, and the honor 

 of the end of the list is given to the special- 

 ized asters and mints, or the still wider 

 wandering orchids, the most eccentric, the 

 most remotely modified, no longer to the 

 typical, the conventionally simple. In this 

 there is a tacit assumption that Gray 

 would have done the same had he possessed 

 the knowledge which is now the common 



property of his students. Probably he 

 would, but that matters nothing, for each 

 one follows his own individuality. 



The characteristic of the Agassiz school 

 was the early and utter discarding of the 

 elaboi-ate zoological philosophy which the 

 master had built up. The school went over 

 bodily to the side of Darwin, not because 

 Darwin had convinced them by his argu- 

 ments, but because their own work in what- 

 ever field led them to the same conclusions. 

 No one Avho studied species in detail could 

 look an animal in the face and believe in 

 the theory of special creation. The same 

 lesson came up from every hand, and we 

 should not have been true to the doctrines 

 of the master if we had refused faith to our 

 own experience. When the Museum of 

 Comparative Zoology was finished, Haeckel 

 is reported to have said, perhaps in envy, 

 perhaps in jest, that "the output of any 

 scientific establishment is in inverse ratio 

 to the completeness of its equipment." In 

 other words, the more men have to do with 

 the less they would do. 



Statistics show that in this paradox 

 there is at least a grain of truth, and this 

 grain of truth stands at the base of my own 

 misgivings. With the scantiest of equip- 

 ment, much of our greatest work has been 

 done. It is said that Joseph Leidy 's array 

 of microscopes and knives cost less than a 

 hundred dollars. The "Poissons Fossiles" 

 was written when its author lived from 

 hand to mouth in the Latin Quarter of 

 Paris, copying "on the backs of old letters 

 and on odd scraps of paper the books he 

 needed, but which he could not buy." 

 Since Haeckel said the words I have 

 quoted, and he tells me that I said them, 

 facilities for biological work have multi- 

 plied a thousand fold. Every German uni- 

 versity, Jena with the rest, and most 

 American universities as well, have a 

 far greater equipment than the Museum 



