ZOOLOGY. 431 
could not be mistaken upon such close observation of it as that 
allowed for the individual in question. Falco Mexicanus ( = poly- 
agrus Cassin) was seen near Mt. Carmel, on the 27th of Septem- 
ber, and near Bridgeport in July, 1871. This species has been 
observed, and also obtained, once before in Illinois, but in the 
northwestern portion, at Rock Island, by Mr. J. D. Sargent. The 
others are all new to the fauna of the state.-—Rozperr RIDGWAY. 
Tue Axxstuetic SCHOOL. — Prof. Cope remarked at the meeting 
of the Philadelphia Academy on May 21, that there were, and had 
been for years, two schools of naturalists, whose modes of treating 
Natural History subjects were quite different. In reference to 
these modes they might be called the technical and natural schools. 
As, however, the claim of the latter to better appreciation of 
natural affinities and classification, appeared to him to be doubtful, 
he thought they had better be called the pseudo-natural school, 
while the so-called technical naturalists were such, on account of 
their pursuing an analytic method. The pseudo-natural school 
decided on the affinities of organic types by their “ physiognomy” 
or their facies, habit and “toute ensemble,” reading nature with 
an artist’s eye, and attaining opinions of systems, without the 
trouble of much anatomical study. They protested against the 
Strict adhesion to “ technical” (or structural) characters, saying 
that they violate natural affinities” oftener than they support or 
express them. Thus their systems become physiognomical, and 
Please the eye by their appearance, rather than the mind by their 
expression of exact structural relations. In accordance with this 
system, species were always well distinguished and could not 
have been derived from common parents, but that nevertheless 
everything “ runs together,” and that the higher groupings are 
mainly & opinionative.” In fact, that although nature has a 
beautiful System we do not. yet understand it, and that it is “ too 
“eon to generalize.” Perhaps this obscurity has its advantages, 
48 it certainly shelters in its profundities any theory of crea- 
tion its Supporters may choose to adopt. Hence they might be 
called the Anesthetic school, or anæsthesiasts (or ařsðņe:s). The 
“natural School think that the way of determining the origin 
and relations of an object is to ascertain of what it is com- 
Posed. This was to be accomplished by analysis of all its appear- 
. -ances and an account taken of every character. In this way the 
