May, 1907 ORNITHOIvOGY FOR A STUDENT OF EVOLUTIONARY PROBLEMS 69 



characterizations similar to those on which is based the classification of crystals 

 and rocks. Form, color, proportions, texture, are these not, after all, the quali- 

 ties upon which the ornithologist — in common with all otherj zoologists — relies 

 for his classification to well nigh the same extent as does the crystallographer 

 and the petrographer? And yet the bird is a living thing; exactly that about it 

 which gives it its interest as compared with the crystal and the rock, quite ignored 

 in its classification! 



Can anything be more patent, when once you look the situation squarely in 

 the face, than that our biological classifications must sooner or later be put on a 

 broader foundation? Nothing that is //<:?//" done is ivell done. Obviously our sys- 

 tems are not more than half done; for they practically ignore at least half of the 

 nature of the objects classified. 



Ill would it become me, a peculiarly unworthy member of the Cooper Club, to 

 bolt into your midst with suggestions of new enterprises for the Club. I am not 

 going to do this. Addressing you not as club members, but as a group of wide- 

 awake ornithologists, I am merely going to point out wherein, as I see it, ornithol- 

 ogy has a vantage ground quite its own in which to use such of the new instru- 

 ments of research as have already proved their efficacy. 



Would it not be practicable thru cooperation to test the nature of so-called 

 ontogenic species among West-American birds? It seems to me that a few incu- 

 bators, a few capacious but inexpensive out-of-door bird cages and a few compe- 

 tent ornithologists judiciously located in different parts of California would in a 

 few years go a long way toward the final answer to this question. What consider- 

 able difficulty should there be in the way of taking the eggs of some of the bleached- 

 out desert species like the L,e Conte thrasher, the Abert towhee, the desert song 

 sparrow, and the pallid wren-tit, to San Francisco, or Eureka, and rearing the 

 broods to see what effect the new climate would have on the color ? 



Again who knows that the question of natural hybridization among birds 

 might not be successfully attacked by breeding experiments? And what a capital 

 problem this is, more than ever now that unit characters and Mendelian inheritance 

 are among the realities of biology! 



I can think of no set of facts an interpretation of which would be more illumi- 

 nating than those presented by the supposed hybrids of the two flickers, the golden- 

 shafted and the red-shafted. This problem appears to stand about where it was in 

 1892. Allen's studies on the distribution of the genus Colaptes and the color 

 styles assumed by the "hybrids" between aiiratus and cafer were published in 

 that year. Much as this good work advanced the subject, it left the most critical 

 points as dark as ever. Do these two species actually mate together? If so are all 

 of the offspring of the same pair marked in the same way? Are the hybrids fertile, 

 and if so how are they marked? Do "hybrids" ever come from pure stock mat- 

 ings of either atiratus or cafer '^ Perhaps these birds could not be induced to breed 

 in captivity, but a whole string of such questions might be partly or wholly 

 answered by studies in nature. An ornithologist well trained in general biology 

 ought to be enabled to devote himself to this single question for an indefinite period. 

 During the breeding season he should spend most of his time in the field; and when 

 he could get away from the demands in this quarter, there would be plenty of 

 laboratory and museum work on pigments, embryonic stages, moulting, anatomy 

 etc. Furthermore the possibility of the birds breeding in captivity should be care- 

 fully tested. Pedigree culture, and crossing under control, would tell most could 

 they be applied. No one but an ornithologist, however skilled in the methods of 

 general biology, is equal to such a problem. 



