338 APPENDIX A 



the "Antillean complex'" when he means the Antilles, of the 

 " organic complex " instead of the characteristic or bodily charac- 

 teristics of an animal or species, and of the "environmental 

 complex," when he means nothing whatever but the environment. 

 In short, Mr. Haseman, and those whose bad example he in this 

 instance foUows, use " complexus " in much the same spirit as that 

 displayed by the famous old lady who derived rehgious — instead 

 of scientific — consolation from the use of " the blessed word 

 Mesopotamia." 



The reason that it is worth while to enter this protest against 

 Mr. Haseman's style is because his work is of such real and marked 

 value. The pamphlet on the distribution of South American 

 species shows that to exceptional ability as a field worker, he adds 

 a rare power to draw, with both caution and originality, the 

 necessary general conclusions from the results of his own observa- 

 tions and from the recorded studies of other men ; and there is 

 nothing more needed at the present moment among our scientific 

 men than the development of a school of men who, while indus- 

 trious and minute observers and collectors and cautious generalizers, 

 yet do not permit the faculty of wise generalization to be atrophied 

 by excessive devotion to labyrinthine detail. 



Haseman upholds with strong reasoning the theory that since 

 the appearance of all but the lowest forms of life on this globe, 

 there have always been three great continental masses — sometimes 

 solid, sometimes broken — extending southward from the northern 

 hemisphere, and from time to time connected in the north, but 

 not in the middle regions or the south since the carboniferous 

 epoch. He holds that life has been intermittently distributed 

 southward along these continental masses when there were no 

 breaks in their southward connection, and intermittently exchanged 

 between them when they were connected in the north ; and he also 

 upholds the view that from a common ancestral form the same 

 species has been often developed in entirely disconnected localities 

 when in these localities the conditions of environment were the same. 



The opposite view is that there have been frequent connections 

 between the great land masses, alike in the tropics, in the south 

 temperate zone, and in the antarctic region. The upholders of 

 this theory base it almost exclusively on the distribution of living 



