Coe — A Century of Zoology in America. 377 



tory in charge of W. K. Brooks. In the 39th and 40th 

 volumes of the third series (1890) occur several papers 

 on evolutionary topics by John T. Gulick (39, 21; 40, 1, 

 437) which have attracted much attention. 



Before the end of this period, however, this Journal 

 was relieved from the necessity of publishing zoologi- 

 cal articles by the establishment of several periodicals 

 devoted especially to the various fields of zoology. We 

 find, therefore, but few exclusively zoological papers 

 after 1885, although articles of a general biological inter- 

 est and the reviews of zoological books continue. 



In the fourth series of the Journal, beginning in 1896, 

 occur also a number of articles on systematic zoology by 

 Verrill and others and several papers having a general 

 biological interest. Brief reviews of a small number of 

 zoological books are still continued, but at the present day 

 the Journal, which played so important a part in the 

 early development of American zoology, has been given 

 over to the geological and physical sciences in harmony 

 with the modern demand for specialization. 



Period of Experimental Biology. 



Zoological studies remained in large measure observa- 

 tional and comparative until about 1890 when the experi- 

 mental methods of Roux, Driesch and others came into 

 prominence. Interest then turned from the accumulation 

 of facts to an analysis of the underlying principles of 

 biological phenomena. The question now was not so 

 much what the organism does as how it does what is 

 observed, and this question could be answered only by 

 the experimental control of the conditions. These exper- 

 imental studies met with such remarkable success that in 

 a few years the older morphological studies were largely 

 abandoned, the Morphological Society changed its name 

 to the Society of Zoologists, and in 1904 the Journal of 

 Experimental Zoology was established. The experimen- 

 tal methods were applied to all branches of biological 

 science; and while it must be freely admitted that little 

 progress has been made toward an understanding of the 

 ultimate causes which underlie biological phenomena, a 

 great advance has been made in the elucidation of the 

 general principles involved. 



Experimental embryology, histology, regeneration, 

 comparative physiology, neurology, cytology, and hered- 



