DEVONIAN FISHES OF IOWA 35 



Nor, on the other hand, must it be supposed that the province 

 of palaeontology is limited to the investigation merely of dead 

 organisms, any more than historical inquiry terminates in a 

 dead knowledge of what happens to have happened during the 

 course of human experience. Every student realizes that the 

 profit of studying history lies in understanding what has hap- 

 pened, in perceiving the principles and causes that have deter- 

 mined the progress of society, in discerning the action of those 

 forces, motives, vicissitudes and transformations that, in so 

 far as they affect the fate of nations or individuals, we can call 

 by the name of Destiny. In human history as in all other phe- 

 nomena of life and motion, it is not so much the events or mani- 

 festations that interest us, as their interpretation. We are not 

 satisfied short of knowing the why, the whence and wherefore. 

 To register the actual fact, whether in history or in science, is 

 the indispensable first step, but only the first ; its necessary com- 

 plement is to perceive the relations between one fact and other 

 facts, to search for causal sequences, in a word to conceive of 

 things in terms of cause and effect. 



Let us illustrate our meaning a little further. What is there 

 in a dead shell that interests the naturalist primarily? Is it 

 the relation between the mollusk and its covering, or is it not 

 rather the relation of the animal plus shell to another animal 

 together with its shell, and so on until each has been assigned 

 its position in the series of shell-bearing animals'? And what 

 matters it whether the animal has but recently become inanimate, 

 or has lain entombed in the rocks throughout geologic cycles? 

 The palaeontologist is concerned with life, life in past periods 

 it is true, but it is a purely secondary consideration that he has 

 to deal with defunct materials. He takes his materials as he 

 finds them, and though they be merely dry bones or considerably 

 worse residue of mortuary corruption, eloquent of death and 

 decay,* they are to him merely as so many inscriptions he has 



*The old-school idea of these things is poetically expressed by Chateaubriand: 

 "C'est dans le coeur de l'homme que sont les graces de la nature. Quant a celui 

 qui etudie les animaux, qu'est-ce autre chose, s'il est incredule que d'etudier des 

 cadavres? A quoi ses recherches le menent-elles? quel peut etre son but? Ah! 

 c'est pour lui qu'on a forme ces cabinets, ecoles ou la Mort, la faux a la main, est 

 le demonstrateur; cimetieres au milieu desquels on a place les horloges pour comp- 

 ter des minutes a des squelettes, pour marquer des heures a l'eternite!" 



