438 BIOLOGY AND ITS MAKERS 
nothing more than an cnumeration of tendencies with a 
running commentary is possible. One notes first a whole- 
some influence in the establishment of higher standards, both 
of research and of scientific publication. Investigations as a 
whole have become more intensive and more critical. Much 
of the work that would have passed muster for publication 
two decades ago is now regarded by the editors of the best 
biological periodicals as too general and too superficial. The 
requisites for the recognition of creditable work being higher, 
tends to elevate the whole level of biological science. 
Improvement in Tools and Methods.—This has come 
about partly through improvement in the tools and in the 
methods of the investigators. It can hardly be said, however, 
that thinking and discernment have been advanced at the 
same rate as the mechanical helps to research. In becoming 
more intensive, the investigation of biological problems has 
lost something in comprehensiveness. That which some of 
the earlier investigators lacked in technique was compensated 
for in the breadth of their preliminary training and in their 
splendid appreciation of the relations of the facts at their 
disposal. 
The great improvement in the mechanical adjustments 
and in the optical powers of microscopes has made it possible 
to see more regarding the physical structure and the activities 
of organisms than ever before. Microtomes of the best work- 
manship have placed in the hands of histologists the means 
of making serial sections of remarkable thinness and regular- 
ity. 
The great development of micro-chemical technique also 
has had the widest influence in promoting exact researches 
in biology. Special staining methods, as those of Golgi 
and Bethe, by means of which the wonderful fabric of the 
nervous system has been revealed, are illustrations. 
The separation by maceration and smear preparation of en- 
