3 oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



A BIOLOGICAL FOEECAST 1 



Bx Professor G. H. PARKER 



HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



fT^HE biologist, like other organisms, has been evolved. The muta- 

 -*- tions of the Greek and Eoman period never established themselves 

 as permanent stocks. They were crushed out by that rank growth of 

 political and theological weeds that finally destroyed itself by its own 

 vegetative excesses. The prototype of the biologist of to-day is essen- 

 tially a modern product and came into existence with the Eenaissance. 

 He is the man who lighted our torch of learning and handed it on to us. 

 But this naturalist of the early days bears almost no resemblance to his 

 modern descendant. Like all reformers, he was an eccentric oblivious 

 alike to popular praise and ridicule. I picture him now with his collect- 

 ing net under his arm, his hat bristling with the pinned trophies of the 

 hunt, and the pockets of his great coat distended with bottles and 

 phials, which, be it said to his honor, came home fuller in contents than 

 they went out. He widened our horizon by discovering a charm in 

 the reptile and the worm and, with his hand-lens as an instrument of 

 war, he conquered the unknown inhabitants of slimy pools and green 

 puddles. He was indeed in all respects the veritable " bug hunter." I 

 might here quote with perfect appropriateness as descriptive of his 

 sympathy with nature, a certain well-known passage about books in 

 brooks and sermons in stones but I have been instructed to avoid any- 

 thing that resembled a Phi Beta Kappa oration and so I desist. 



Lest you think I have overdrawn my picture of our ancient pro- 

 genitor, let me read to you a sentence or two from the pen of one who 

 well represented his class and whose book, a " Synonymic Catalogue of 

 the Macrolepidoptera of North America," was a delight to my boyish 

 heart. I quote a few sentences of advice as to costume. 



I would further add that for these excursions a coat made of some light 

 woolen material is preferable: linen coats are abominable, as the suspenders by 

 the aid of perspiration, adorn the back of that garment with a St. Andrew's 

 cross, which, though of no moment to our country cousins, is by no means 

 desirable as we get within the city limits on our return homeward, if it be still 

 daylight. This coat should be plentifully supplied with pockets, two inside 

 breast pockets, one of great capacity to put the net rim and all in, if you don't 

 want to carry it in your hand, the other for your handkerchief, segar-case, small 

 glass jar, etc.; it should also have two outside pockets near bottom of coat, the 

 one to put your collecting box in, and the other for lunch, which latter, although 



'In address delivered at the annual banquet of the Brown University 

 chapter of Sigma Xi, May 28, 1913. 



