THE-C9rfD?R 



Volume IX May-Jvine 1907 Nvimber 3 



ORNITHOI.OGY FOR A STUDENT OF EVOI.UTIONARY PROBLEMS ^ 



By WM. E. RITTER 



NOT long ago I made a hurried visit to the graveyard wherein He the remains 

 of learned societies that I have seen come to life and go to death during my 

 acquaintance with affairs of the intellect in California. Never mind how 

 many tomb-stones I found there nor what inscriptions they bore. Our interest is 

 in the living rather than in the dead. Reference is made to these graves merely 

 for the sake of asking wherefore in the midst of such wide-spread death and decay, 

 any of the creations referred to should possess real powers of endurance. 



I am speaking of associations whose ends are mutual helpfulness among persons 

 having some common intellectual interest, but which have to accomplish these ends 

 without legal status and money endowment. What ones of all such have escaped 

 the common lot? Everybody acquainted with the Cooper Ornithological Club 

 knows one of them. There is one other, and only one as noteworthy as this. 

 That is the Philosophical Union, the focus of which is here in Berkeley. It would 

 be interesting to know why these two organizations so asunder in character and 

 purpose should have struck such deep root into the intellectual soil of our com- 

 munity. One meaning of the fact is that in this, as in any community where many 

 minds are working vigorously and without trammel, physical nature in her most 

 objective, most sensuous aspects is bound to have the homage due her at one end of 

 the intellectual gamut, while the most recondite problems of existence will enforce 

 their claims to attention at the other. This is as it should be. It means intellec- 

 tual health and symmetry. The whole universe belongs to the human mind, and 

 the mind's determination to make good its exalted claims is irresistible. Proof of 

 the validity of these claims is furnished by the circumstance that into whatsoever 

 part of the universe the mind penetrates, it is there able to establish law and order; 

 or if another form of expression be preferred, it finds there law and order of a sort 

 fitted to its own powers and modes of working. 



I Read at Northern Division Cooper Club, March 9, 1907. 



