and Importance of their Preservation. 403 



specimen of which the main characters are not known, or not 

 placed on record. A vertebra of a reptile or the tooth of a 

 mammal, if perfect and characteristic, may form a type that 

 will be distinctive enough for the present requirements of the 

 investigator. What the future may demand, will depend upon 

 the advance of knowledge in that branch of science. 



In the choice of specimens worthy of being types, I can only 

 suggest a course that seems to me the proper one. I believe 

 experience has already shown that to make types of incom- 

 plete or uncharacteristic specimens is seldom of permanent 

 advantage to an author, and almost always a lasting injury to 

 the branch of science he represents. There are more good 

 specimens waiting to be found than any naturalist can possibly 

 describe, and one such specimen is worth many of inferior 

 grade. 



I may perhaps be permitted to mention, in this connection, 

 my own experience in the matter of type specimens. As a 

 student in Germany, years ago, I had my attention called par- 

 ticularly to this subject, and was then strongly impressed with 

 the importance of using only good specimens for first descrip- 

 tions. This rule I have endeavored to follow. My researches, 

 especially in western North America, have resulted in the dis- 

 covery of more than one thousand new species of extinct verte- 

 brates, and of these I have described about live hundred. 

 Had I been satislied to use inferior specimens as types, I 

 might have increased the number by one-half at least. 



No small part of the present literature of the paleontology 

 of vertebrates is based on names applied to fragments, and a 

 long period of more accurate work will be required before 

 these can be rejected or incorporated into the digested knowl- 

 edge of the subject. I recall one collection of types of extinct 

 vertebrates, published in a single volume, and near a hundred 

 in number, the greater part of which are uncharacteristic frag- 

 ments, well fitted to burden science for all time with a legacy 

 of uncertainty and doubt. Such work is a positive discourage- 

 ment to all future investigators in the same field, and its value 

 to science may well be questioned. 



The necessity of greater care in selecting t} T pe specimens, in 

 Paleontology, at least, needs no argument to any student of 

 the science who has done sufficient original work to appreciate 

 the increasing difficulties of accurate investigation. To those 

 who have had less experience, a word of warning, I trust, will 

 not be in vain. 



