68 PROCEEDINGS OE THE NEW HAYEX MEETING 



human existence is pursued in our universities and so long as a knowledge of 

 human achievement remains an essential of human culture. 



DANA, THE ZOOLOGIST 

 BY JOHN M. CLABKE 



In nothing, I believe, does the genius of this extraordinary and many-faceted 

 mind shine more brightly than in its achievements in zoology. Professor 

 Dana accomplished results in this science in his actually brief contact with it 

 that would have made a large harvest for the life work of any special student 

 of it. His dealings with the science were in a sense so brief as to be quite 

 incidental ; and yet, brief and incidental though they may have been, they gave 

 him very positive and authoritative standing among the zoologists of his day 

 and of this day. Professor Dana was a mineralogist by inception, a geologist 

 in fruition. Zoology, it may be fairly said, was thrust on him. It was again 

 the Wilkes Expedition which forced the development of his interest into this 

 science. He was detailed, on board the Peacock, as mineralogist of the expe- 

 dition. There was no other man in the fleet that had a like function. Titian 

 Peale was "naturalist" aboard the same ship ; Pickering and Couthouy were 

 "naturalists" aboard the Yincennes; Rich and Brackenridge were botanists. 

 It would seem as though the work of the "naturalist" were well provided for, 

 yet to the mineralogist fell the lot of making rather the most distinguished 

 record of all these naturalists in their own field. 



The situation and its conclusions are after all not difficult to understand. 

 What was there for a mineralogist in the harbors of the southern continent or 

 among the atolls and volcanic islands of the South Sea? What of geology was 

 there for a mineralogist so situated in the 1830's? Were these places that 

 could excite the ardor of a mineralogist? The mineralogist of the expedition 

 indeed never made a report. There was a report of serious import on geology, 

 which was concerned largely in the discussion of secular changes in level on 

 continental coast and island outline. But all through his narratives, both on 

 geology and zoology, we can see writ large the intense, almost boyish enthu- 

 siasm with which he cruised and waded among the coral reefs and atolls, 

 sounding, dredging, gathering their brilliant and eternally variant life forms; 

 and here, too, we may see clearly that the mineralogist was working with two 

 sciences, each of which was collateral to the other, and it would be impossible 

 to say whether his zoological studies then were not quite as essential to his 

 geological conclusions as were his geological determinations to his zoology. At 

 all events the older naturalists of this expedition, as well as the commander, 

 realized that these studies had made Mr. Dana the man to undertake not only 

 the report on the geology of the expedition, but the special reports on the 

 zoophytes and the Crustacea. Ten years and more were given to the prepara- 

 tion of these great rejxn-ts. and I wonder if the zoologists of today realize that 

 Dana published, inter alia, in these sumptuous and rare volumes descriptions 

 of over 200 species of Anthozoa and G80 species of Crustacea. In 1855. when 

 the last of these reports had appeared — the Crustacea — Dana stood as the 

 world's leading authority on these two divisions of the animal kingdom. As 

 ever and in all things scientific, he had attained not merely excellence but 

 supremacy. 



Now I take it as an extraordinary fact that, these great undertakings 



