21 



lines, and the ears given a natural set, with the result of 

 rendering all of the external characters readily available for 

 study. Such a specimen is also a pleasing object to the 

 eye, in comparison with the commonly more or less dis- 

 torted and unattractive specimens of earlier days. Further- 

 more, not only is the sex, date, and place of collection given 

 on the label, but the altitude of the locality, if in a moun- 

 tainous district, is also recorded. 



With the old-time material it was often difficult to deter- 

 mine satisfactorily even the color characters of a specimen, 

 to say nothing of size and proportions, owing to its faulty 

 preservation ; while in that of to-day all of the external 

 features can be utilized, in addition to the measurements 

 taken by the collector from the animal before skinning. 

 Thus in respect to resources the worker of to-day has 

 advantages immensely superior to those of his predeces- 

 sors prior to a very recent date. 



As is well known to mammalogists generally, and as I 

 have before stated, 1 this great improvement in the amount 

 and character of the material now available for investiga- 

 tion is due primarily to the enthusiastic and well-directed 

 efforts of Dr. C. Hart Merriam, Chief of the Divison of 

 Ornithology and Mammalogy of the United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture. 



(3.) RESULTS. — As already indicated, methods of re- 

 search have undergone radical change since 1857, the date 

 of Baird's great work on North American mammals. 

 While new forms are still looked for with considerable 

 avidity, it is not by any means so much the end and main 

 purpose of investigation as was the case thirty to forty 

 years ago. Then the idea of evolution by environment 

 had scarcely been suggested and formed no part of the 

 working hypothesis of the naturalist. Twenty years ago 

 it had become fairly established. At the present time the 

 relation of forms to each other, geographically and phylo- 

 genetically, and to their environment, is the one interest- 



1 Trans. N.Y. Acad. Sci., X., p. 84. 



