Coe — A Century of Zoology in America. 355 



Art. XL — A Century of Zoology in America; by 

 Wesley R. Coe. 



This article is intended as a brief survey of the devel- 

 opment of zoology in America, and no attempt is made 

 to give a general history of the science. There are 

 numerous accounts in several languages of zoological 

 history in general, among them being W. A. Locy's 

 "Biology and its Makers." Brief outlines of the history 

 of zoology may be found in many zoological and biolog- 

 ical text-books. 



For the history of American zoology the reader is 

 referred to Packard's report on "A Century's Progress 

 in American Zoology," published in the American Nat- 

 uralist, (10, 591, 1876), to Packard's "History of Zool- 

 ogy," published in volume 1 of the Standard Natural 

 History (pp. lxii to Ixxii, 1885) ; to G, B. Goode's 

 "Beginnings of Natural History in America," 1 and 

 "Beginnings of American Science," 2 and to H. S. Pratt's 

 Manual of the Common Invertebrate Animals (pp. 1-9), 

 1916. In Binney's "Terrestrial Air-breathing Mollusks 

 of the United States" (1851) is a chapter on the rise of 

 scientific zoology in the United States which well describes 

 the zoological conditions in the early part of the century, 

 while numerous monographs and papers give the history 

 of the investigations on the various groups of animals 

 or on special fields of study. 



Brief biographical sketches of the most distinguished 

 of our older Naturalists — "Wilson, Audubon, Agassiz, 

 Wyman, Gray, Dana, Baird, Marsh, Cope, Goode and 

 Brooks are given in "Leading American Men of Sci- 

 ence," edited by David Starr Jordan, 1910. 



The developmental history of zoology in America falls 

 naturally into four fairly well marked periods, namely : — 

 1, Period of descriptive natural history, previous to 

 1847, embracing the early studies on the classification 

 and habits of animals, characteristic of the zoological 

 work previous to the arrival of Louis Agassiz in Amer- 

 ica. 2, Period of morphology and embryology, 1847- 

 1870, during which the influence of Agassiz directed the 



1 Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 3, 35, 1886. 



2 Ibid, 4, 9, 1888. Both of these papers are reprinted in Ann. Eept. 

 Smithsonian Inst., 1897, IT. S. Nat. Mus., Pt. 2, pp. 357-466, 1901. 



