ALPHEUS HYATT: MEMORIAL MEETING. 
425 
early this spring to study on the spot the causes of the remarkable 
local variations in these snails, to which attention had been called 
by the suggestive essays and rich collections of the Rev. J. T. 
Gulick. The research as begun by Professor Hyatt is a beautiful 
one, and he went about it in his usual skilled and thoroughgoing 
way. He had made for his purpose a large plaster model of Oahu, 
with each range and valley in miniature, indicating the shells in their 
respective habitats, and representing the lines of migration and 
origination of new local species by variously colored cords. 
The working out of these various problems and showing their 
connections with the larger and broader phases of biological and 
geological science were the delight of Professor Hyatt’s life. Such 
theories and views are the poetry of science. They make the life 
of the naturalist who is obliged to undergo so much drudgery in 
species-work, nomenclature, etc., worth living. 
There are those who are fitted to do excellent analytic and special 
work, but who are not gifted with the power of generalization, and 
deprecate all synthetic speculation. They seem unaware of the 
fact, that, by the framing and use of hypotheses and theories, we 
forge the instruments by which we open up new fields of research 
and of discovery. 
Professor Hyatt completely resisted and overcame the dangers of 
too great specialization. In his own generation, if we mistake not, 
he will take rank with Haeckel, Cope, Marsh, Gaudry, Bernard, 
Neumayr, and others, who have by their researches placed the 
science of paleontology on a vastly higher plane. Fossils are not 
now regarded as time-marks simply, but in the light of modern 
morphology, they serve to call up hosts of ancestral forms, the 
founders of the lines of descent, ending, many of them, in forms 
now living. 
Such are some of the labors accomplished by Professor Hyatt, 
whose death we so deeply deplore. To many here assembled he 
was a teacher, an adviser, a guide; to others, a fellow-worker,,and 
to all, a source of inspiration. 
