IS93-: 
59 fHyatt. 
migrated from Central America and Peru westward to Easter 
Island and Polynesia. Everything now points out that continen- 
tal areas existed during Quaternary and even Tertiary times in 
the southern regions of the globe, and that the existing faunas 
of Madagascar, Tristanda Cunha, Kerguelen Land, Campbell 
Islands, New Zealand, Easter Island, the Galapagos Islands, Juan 
Fernandez, Tierra del Fuego, and of southern America came 
from great continental surfaces. Subsidences have left only 
islands and the western parts of South America and Central 
America as witnesses of jieriods of time and of inhabitants which 
[)assed away at the end of the Quaternary epoch. 
BIOPLASTOLOGY AND THE RELATED BKANCI1E8 
OF BIOLOGIC RESEARCH. 
BY ALPHEUS HYATT. 
Scientific conservatives to whom new terms are distasteful will, 
I fear, find little that is praiseworthy in this paper. Those who lift 
their voices in protestation against the multiplication of terms care- 
fully worked out and founded upon observation are wasting time 
that they might employ to 1)etter advantnge impartially testing 
their truth and discussing their applicability and utility. Science 
has invariably marked its progress with new names and new terms ; 
these are the mile stones and finger posts ; he who does not know 
how to use them cannot get along as fast as he who does. 
The same struggle exists in taxonomy between the old school 
desiring the old generic names to be retained and those who are 
dividing and subdividing accepted genera into new genera in 
accordance with the results of observation. As a rule the new 
subdivisions eventually gain admission to the literature. The older 
men of each generation as a rule reject them, but the younger test 
them without prejudice, and, if they are useful, as they commonly 
are when founded upon thoughtful observation, wonder why any 
one refused to mnke them a part of the vocabulary of science. 
This has been the fate of the terminology proposed and the ideas 
published by Haeckel in his great book "Morphologie der orga- 
