appearing to solve some of the most important problems of descent. Then the stage shifted to South America, where an equally surprising revelation of unthought of life was made. We were in the very midst of the more thorough examination of this Patagonian and Pampæan world when the scene of new discovery suddenly changed to North Africa—previously the 'dark continent' of paleontology—and again a complete series of surprises was forthcoming. Each continent has solved its quota of problems and has aroused its quota of new ones. Now we look to central and South Africa, to the practically unknown eastern Asia, and possibly to a portion of the half sunken continent of Antarctica for a future stock of answers and new queries.
Rapid exploration and discovery, however, are not the only symptoms of health in a science; we do not aim to pass down to history as great collectors; we must accumulate conceptions and ideas as rapidly a? we accumulate materials; it will be a reproach to our generation if we do not advance as far beyond the intellectual status of Cuvier, Owen, Huxley and Cope as we advance beyond their material status in the way of collections of fossils. We must thoroughly understand where we are in the science, how we are doing our thinking, what we are aiming to accomplish; we must grasp, as the political leader, Tilden, observed, the most important things and do them first.
Paleontology a Branch of Biology.
Let us first cut away any remaining brushwood of misconception as to the position of paleontology among the sciences. I do not wish to quarrel with my superior officers, but I must first record a protest against the fact that in the classification scheme of this congress, in the year of our Lord 1904, paleontology is bracketed as a division of geology. It is chiefly an accident of birth which has connected paleontology with geology; because fossils were first found in the rocks, geology the foster mother was mistaken for the true mother, zoology—a confusion in the birth records which Huxley did his best to correct. The preservation of extinct animals and plants in the rocks is one of the fortunate accidents of time, but to mistake this position as indicative of scientific affinity is about as logical as it would be to bracket the Protozoa, which are principally aquatic organisms, under hydrology, or the Insecta, because of their aerial life, under meteorology. No, this is emphatically a misconception which is still working harm in some museums and institutions of learning. Paleontology is not geology, it is zoology; it succeeds only in so far as it is pursued in the zoological j and biological spirit.
In order to make clear the special rôle of paleontology among the biological sciences and at the same time the grateful services which it is enabled to render to its foster science, geology, as well as to geog-
