Part 40

Notes.

Footnote 96:

Hess, R. H., Foundations of National Prosperity, p. 100.

Footnote 97:

Report Nat’l Museum, 1904, pp. 189–733.

Footnote 98:

Featherstonhaugh, J. D., Am. Geol., 3, 220, 1889.

Footnote 99:

Whitney, Mineral Wealth of the United States, pp. 248–250.

Footnote 100:

Foster and Whitney, 31st Cong., 1st session, House Doc. 69, pp. 13–14, 1850.

Footnote 101:

First Annual Rept. U. S. Geol. Survey, p. 4.

Footnote 102:

Wheeler, Report 3d Internat’l Geog. Cong., p. 492, 1885.

Footnote 103:

The views of the writer on “natural monopolies” in the Government service are set forth in an address delivered at the centennial celebration of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, April 5, 1916. (See Science, vol. 43, pp. 659–665, May 12, 1916.)

Footnote 104:

For correspondence on this subject, see Minnesota Geol. Survey, Eighth Ann. Rept., 1880, p. 173.

Footnote 105:

Owen, D. D., 30th Cong., 1st sess., Senate Doc. No. 57, p. 7, 1848.

Footnote 106:

This essential difference between present-day requirements and the needs of earlier generations has been discussed by W. C. Mendenhall, the geologist in charge of the Land Classification Board of the Geological Survey: Proceedings 2d Pan-American Sci. Cong., 1915–16, 3, 761.

VI ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY

By RICHARD SWANN LULL

Introduction.

Unlike its sister science of Invertebrate Paleontology, which has been approached so largely from the viewpoint of stratigraphic geology, that of the vertebrates is essentially a biologic science, having its inception in the masterly work of Cuvier, who is also to be regarded as the founder of comparative anatomy. For long decades, vertebrate paleontology was simply a branch of comparative anatomy or morphology in that it dealt almost exclusively with the form and other peculiarities of fossil bones and teeth, often in a more or less fragmentary condition, very little or no attention being paid to any other system of the creature’s anatomy. Distribution both in space and in time was recorded, but the value of vertebrates in stratigraphy was still to be appreciated and has hardly yet come into its own. It is readily seen, therefore, that the two departments of paleontology did not enlist the same workers or even the same type of investigators, for while the two sciences have much in common and should have more, the vertebratist must, above all else, be a morphologist, with a keen appreciation of form, and a mind capable of retaining endless structural details and of visualizing as a whole what may be known only in part. The initial work of the brilliant Cuvier set so high a standard of preparedness and mental equipment that as a consequence, the number of those engaged in vertebrate research has never been large as compared with the workers in some other branches of science, but the results achieved by the few who have consecrated their research to the fossil vertebrates has been in the main of a high order.

At first, as has been emphasized, this work was largely morphological, dealing both with the individual skeletal elements and later with the bony framework as a whole. Then came the endeavor to clothe the bones with sinews and with flesh—to imagine, in other words, the life-appearance of the ages-departed form—with such of its habits as could be deduced from structure of body, tooth, and limb. Next came the working out of systematic series of vertebrates and their marshalling into species, genera, and larger groups, and much time was thus spent, especially when rapid discovery brought a continual stream of new forms before the systematist, and hence some appreciation of the countless hosts of bygone creatures which peopled the world in the geologic past. This systematic work, however, was based upon the most painstaking morphologic comparisons and so the science was still within the scope of comparative anatomy.