Report of the President 



83 



revision of the Lower Eocene fossil mammal faunas, Dr. 

 Gregory his researches upon the Evolution of the Primates 

 and Mr. Brown upon Cretaceous dinosaurs. Eight articles in 

 the American Museum Bulletin represent the completed por- 

 tions of these researches. 



The extent to which the work of this department has served 



to advance scientific knowledge of fossil vertebrates, and to 



place our conclusions as to the history of life 



Popularizing the on ^he ear th U p on a broader and more safe 

 Museum's Work r . 



foundation, is very imperfectly realized as yet, 



even by the scientific world. The specialists, busied in their 

 researches, have hardly taken time to look up and survey the 

 progress of the past twenty-five years. The writers who cover 

 a broader field and aim to present the results of investigations 

 to schools and colleges or to the general public are apt to 

 obtain a very imperfect or erroneous notion of what these in- 

 vestigations really mean. It is too often considered beneath 

 the dignity of the specialist to write popular articles, or it is 

 thought that anyone with a superficial knowledge of the sub- 

 ject can do this kind of work. On the contrary, it would seem 

 that to disseminate widely interesting and at the same time 

 accurate information is the most difficult but the most im- 

 portant part of the Museum's work. It should be understood 

 that the popular or semi-popular books and articles issued by 

 the staff involve a great amount of research and preparation 

 and aim to be as accurate as present knowledge permits. The 

 principal contribution of this sort published during the year is 

 the series of articles by Professor Osborn in the Scientific 

 Monthly entitled "The Origin and Evolution of Life on the 

 Earth," issued in book form by Charles Scribner's Sons. A 

 number of articles and notes in the American Museum Journal 

 by Dr. Matthew and others have also been published, and sev- 

 eral guides and handbooks upon the collections are under way. 



