68 THE CONDOR Vol. IX 



and a concomitant impetus to their study resulted. In the absence of clearly 

 defined conceptions of what either a variety or a species is, or of workable criteria 

 for testing them, the multiplication of intergrading series ceased after a while, to be 

 profitable to the student of evolution. For one occupied primarily with the making 

 of a consistent, usable classification, such series are, of course, always important. 

 But to him who seeks the meaning of these series, the mere exhibition of them does 

 not yield much satisfaction; and the multiplication of instances after conviction is 

 reached that the world is full of them, is not very enlightening. So it came about, 

 not from the behests of science, but from that particular frailty of human nature 

 which is impatient of elTorts the value of which as measured by its own standards 

 is not obvious, that "hair-splitting" in systematic botany and zoology fell into dis- 

 repute. Now, however, that the discoveries of Mendel and De Vries have put into 

 our minds conceptions about kinds of organisms that we did not have before, and 

 into our hands instruments for testing the character and validity of these, we see 

 that it is exactly to the refined observations and descriptions of what exists in 

 nature in the way of kinds, that those engaged on the problems of origin are com- 

 pelled to turn for material to work with. Right, in science as in all else, may 

 serenely await her day of vindication. 



Species splitters, among whom American ornithologists have long sat on the 

 front benches, have a right to be gratified that the very hands which a few brief 

 years ago were pointed at them in disapprobation of their labors, are now stretched 

 out to take from them the products of those same labors. You young bird men 

 who a short while ago were likely to receive smiles of cynicism rather than of 

 encouragement from biologists in high places for your enthusiasm in making out 

 the subspecies of our song sparrows, our juncos, our kinglets, our horned larks and 

 the rest, need no longer lament lest your work should have no reward but the 

 pleasure in its performance. For a long time to come whatever of this sort you do 

 will be rated higher on the scientific stock exchange than formerly it was. 



But I am not going to let you off without an appendix to this reward of merit 

 which I gladly give you. What further are ornithologists going to do in the 

 premises? That they will keep on gathering information of the kind they have 

 already garnered in such richness is to be hoped. Will they do more? Will they 

 take a hand in searching after the significance of the facts, now that keener prob- 

 ing instruments have been devised? Two circumstances encourage the expectation 

 that they will. In the first place the large amount of young blood there always is 

 in ornithology, augurs well. Proverbially it is on the young men that new methods 

 and new ideas have to rely mostly for getting themselves tried out. 



In the second place it would seem that the insistence ornithology has long 

 placed on precision should be a guarantee of its readiness to try other methods that 

 are pre-eminently of this character. Exactness in observation, in description, in 

 measurements, in terminology, has been its special glory. The critical habits 

 engendered by these exactions should, it would seem, be rich and eager soil for still 

 other exact methods to grow in. The ornithological positiveness as to what, on the 

 morphological side, constitutes the species and subspecies, and the rigorous prac- 

 tices in testing these, leav^e little to be desired. This very positiveness and rigor, 

 going thus far, ought to be intolerant of restraint on going farther. To the 

 ornithologist who loves truth no less ardently than he does birds, the utter vague- 

 ness as to what his morphologically delimited groups would look like were they to 

 be physiologically tested, cannot but forever fill the background of his scientific 

 consciousness with foreboding. Cloddish and inadequate to the student of birds, 

 above all naturalists, ought to be a classification that rests almost exclusively on 



