THE PALEOBOTANISTS '^67 



In imag-ination, tlie ancient floras should be presented as if living-, asso- 

 ciated witli the animals of their times and contrasted with those of today. 

 The modern faunas and floras would then stand out in their marvelous 

 progression. We understand that one such book is in the works, and that 

 we are to have from Doctor Wieland a volume presenting the cycad floras 

 in all of their splendor. In the same way, the invertebrate workers 

 should popularize their studies, and here historical geology is an inviting 

 field. Think of what could be done with trilobites and euryptcrids, the 

 wonders of cephalopod development, the corals and coral reefs of geologic 

 time, the peopling of the seas and oceans, the ancient climates as indi- 

 cated by the fossils and sediments, and the rise and decline of animals 

 in geologic time. Book publishers nowadays are on the lookout for these 

 p()])nlar books, one of which has gone into thousands of copies. A more 

 admired monument a paleontologist can not build for himself. 



Now, to come to the condition of x\merican invertebrate paleontology, 

 we count 74 devotees in this division of our science, 8 of whom are 

 women ; in fact, no other division has "lady paleontologists." At present, 

 ^lexico has no visible student of fossils of any kind, and one of the two 

 it did have is now living in this country, working privately as a petroleum 

 geologist. In Canada there are 7 paleontologists, all invertebratists. Of 

 the 74 invertebrate workers, 71 are in the Paleontological Society; but a 

 close analysis shows that only 37 of them are leaders in the sense of our 

 previous definition of the word. Of the 74, 30 are located in colleges or 

 universities, 14 on national and 7 on State surveys, 7 in museums, and 

 the remainder, 16 in number, are following paleontology more or less as 

 a hobby. In this last class, however, we note several distinguished names. 



The first glaring fact that needs to be pointed out, and it is a discom- 

 fiting one, is that we invertebrate paleontologists are fashionable almost 

 to the last man, in that about 90 per cent of our work is of a chrono- 

 genetic character. In other words, almost all of our recent research has 

 in view primarily the discerning of the developnient of the earth's vary- 

 ing surface phenomena. We are, therefore, almost wholly dominated by 

 the geologic aspect of our science. Twenty-live years ago we prided our- 

 selves on having an active school deeply interested in ontogenesis and 

 phylogenesis, with at least a half dozen workers clustered around Alpheus 

 Hyatt. He and Charles E. Beecher have gone on, four of their students 

 have almost completely gone over to the chronogenetic field, and one is 

 struggling alone, having neither the assistance of an institution to father 

 his work nor the adequate sympathy of his associates. It is true that in 

 our American universities there is no place as yet for pure paleontology, 

 unless it be of the spectacular type; nor is there as yet adequate recog- 



