ADDRESS 
OF 
EDWARD S. MORSE, 
PRESIDENT 
OF THE 
American Association for the Advancement of Science. 
DELIVERED AT THE 
NEW YORK MEETING, 
AUGUST, 1887. 
SALEM P11E S S : 
1887. ADDRESS 
OF 
EDWARD S. MORSE, 
PRESIDENT 
OF THE 
American Association for the Advancement of Science. 
DELIVERED AT THE 
NEW YORK MEETING, 
AUGUST, 1887. 
SALEM PRESS; 
1887. ADDRESS 
BY 
E. S. MORSE, 
THE RETIRING PRESIDENT OF THE ASSOCIATION. 
Ladies and Gentlemen of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science :— 
Eleven years ago I had the honor of reading before this associa- 
tion an address in which an attempt was made to show what Amer- 
ican zoologists had done for evolution. My reasons for selecting 
this subject were, first, that no general review of this nature had 
been made ; and, second, that many of the oft-repeated examples in 
support of the Derivative theory were from European sources and 
did not carry the weight of equally important facts, the records of 
which were concealed in our own scientific journals. Darwin was 
pleased to write to me that most of the facts I had mentioned were 
familiar to him, but to use his own words he was amazed at their 
number and importance when brought together in this manner. 
The encouragement of his recognition bas led me to select a con- 
tinuation of this theme as a subject for the customary presidential 
address, a task which is at best a thankless if not a profitless one. 
Had I faintly realized, however, the increasing number and impor- 
tance of the contributions made by our students on this subject, I 
should certainly have chosen a different theme. 
Incomplete as is this record of ten years work I am compelled 
to present it. In the Buffalo address two marked periods in the 
work of the zoologists in this country are recognized: the one pe- 
riod embracing the work of the topographers, the field surveyors 
in the science ; the other period dating from the advent of Agas- 
siz with the wonderful impulse he imparted to the study by his 
enthusiasm and devotion. A third period in American zoological 
science, and by far the most important awakening, dates from the 2 
ADDRESS BT 
publication of Darwin’s “Origin of Species.” Its ofTect on zoolog- 
ical literature was striking. The pu|>ers were first tinged with 
the new doctrine, then saturated, and now, without reference to the 
theory, Derivation is taken for granted. 
As zoologists we are indebted to Darwin for the wide-spread 
public interest in our work. Before Darwin the importance of our 
special studies was far outweighed by the practical value placed 
upon science in the application of which an immediate material 
gain was assured. Chemistry, physics, geology were itn|>ortnnt 
only because a practical application of these sciences was capable 
of showing an immediate material return. 
Agassiz, in his appeal to the state for appropriations for the great 
Museum at Cambridge, insisted that there were higher dividends 
than those of money to be looked for in endowment* for zoological 
museums and these were intellectual dividends. While the force 
of this appeal will always remain true, the transcendent impor- 
tance of the naturalist’s studies from the standpoint of Darwin 
is widely recognized. Man now liecomes an object of rigid scien- 
tific scrutiny from the new position which has shed such a flood of 
light upon the animals below him. 11 is habits, behavior, the phys- 
ical influences of his environment and their effects u|>on him, 
transmission of peculiarities through the laws of heredity,—all these 
factors are directly implicated in the burning questions and prob- 
lems which agitate him to-day. (Questions of labor, tem|>erance, 
prison reform, distribution of charities, religious agitations are 
questions immediately concerning tfie mammal man and are now 
to be seriously studied from the solid standpoint of observation 
and experiment and not from the emotional and often incongruous 
nttitude of the church. To a naturalist, it may seem well nigh 
profitless to discuss the question of evolution since the battle lias 
been won, and if there be any discussion it is as to the relative 
merits and force of the various factors involved. The public, 
however, are greatly interested in the matter as may be seen by a 
renewal of the fight in the Knglish reviews, and the agitation is 
still kept up by well-meaning, though ignorant advisers, who insist 
that science has not yet accepted the doctrine ; and great church 
organizations meet to condemn and expel their teachers of science 
from certain schools of learning because their teachings are im- 
bued with the heresy. 
Dr. Asa Gray,1 in his discriminating biographical memoir of E. S. MORSE. 
3 
Darwin,says in regard to the “ Doctrine of Descent ” “it is an ad- 
vance from which it is evidently impossible to recede. As has been 
said of the theory of the Conservation of so of this : 
‘The proof of this great generalization, like that of all other gen- 
eralizations, lies mainly in the fact that the evidence in its favor is 
continually augmenting, while that against it is continually dimin- 
ishing, as the progress of science reveals to us more and more the 
workings of the universe.’” Let us examine then the evidences, 
trivial as well as important, that have been recorded by American 
zoologists within the past ten years in support of the Derivative 
theory. 
Without further apology for the very imperfect character of this 
surve}7, let me at once begin by calling attention first to the testi- 
mony regarding the variation in habits and evidences of reasoning 
power in animals. The establishment of individual variation in 
mental powers, change in habits, etc., lies at the foundation of Dar- 
winism as furnishing material for selective action. There is no 
group of animals which exceeds the birds in varied and suggestive 
material for the evolutionist. It is a significant fact that the birds, 
which appeared to Cuvier and his contemporaries a closed type, a 
group that seemed to fulfil the ideal conception of a class arche- 
type, as compared with other groups which had their open as well as 
obscure relationships, should be of all groups the one that first 
yielded its exclusive characteristics. In fact there is no group in 
which the barriers have been so completely demolished as in this 
apparently distinct and isolated class. An attentive and patient 
study of the birds has established almost every point defined by 
Darwin in his theory of natural selection. One has only to recall 
the marked reptilian affinities as shown in their embryological and 
paleontological history. Besides all these structural relationships 
the birds possess as a group remarkable and striking illustrations 
of variation in color, size, marking, nesting, albinism, melanism, 
moulting, migration, song, geographical variation, sexual selec- 
tion, secondary sexual characters, protective coloring ; and in then- 
habits show surprising mechanical cunning and ingenuity, curious 
and inexplicable freaks, parental affection, hybridity,—indeed the 
student need go no farther than the birds to establish every prin- 
ciple of the Derivative theory. 
The many observations on the nesting habits of birds would 
form a curious chapter as illustrating the individual peculiarities 
of these creatures. 4 
ADDKKSS IIT 
Dr. A. S. Packard 9 records the fact, as related to him by Mr. 
Wyatt, of wild geese nesting in large cotton-wood trees on Snake 
river, west of the Rocky mountains, and Doctor Cones in Ids 
“ Birds of the Northwest” says wild geese “ nest in various parts 
of the Upper Missouri and Yellowstone regions in trees.” Mr. II. 
W. Turner3 observes a robin nesting on the ground. The late Dr. 
T. M. Brewer4 points out some very curious “Variations in the 
Nests of the same Species of Birds.” He not only observes indi- 
vidual variation in nest structure, but shows that in different re- 
gions of the country birds of the same species build different 
kinds of nests, and in reflecting on these peculiarities he is led to 
say “If we cannot understand what it can be that stimulates an 
Empidonax in Staten island to build a pensile nest, while its fel- 
low in Indiana builds one like a deep cup and surrounded with 
thorns, and another group in Pennsylvania put theirs on an ex- 
posed tree top, and so flat that the eggs seem liable to roll out, 
we must see that some cause, hidden to us, is gradually effecting 
changes that sooner or later may become universal in the sj>eeie8, 
though which it is to be we may not be aide to imagine.” 
Mr. J. A. Allen,5 in writing on the inadequate theory of birds’ 
nests, shows grave and irtqMjrtant exceptions to Wallace’s theory, 
though he subscribes heartily to his philosophy of birds’ nests. He 
expresses surprise that closely allied sftecies of birds should often- 
times build divers kinds of nests, overlooking the fact that even 
closely allied varieties of man build entirely unlike houses. 
Mr F. H. Knowlton6 records a cliff swallow appropriating, for 
the construction of its own nest, (>ellets of mud which were f>eing 
brought by another swallow. Also the curious fact that a num- 
ber of swallows were observed busily engaged in sealing up a 
nest in which one of their comrades lay dead. Among the curi- 
ous traits of birds, Mr. II. B. Bailey 7 communicates some new ones 
observed in the red-headed wood|>ecker by Mr. Agersborg of Da- 
kota territory. This gentleman had observed one of these birds 
wedging grasshoppers in a large crack of an old oak |>ost. Nearly 
a hundred were stored away in this manner, the bird afterwards 
feeding at leisure on the supply. This parallels the habit of the 
California woodpecker storing acorns in holes in the tree and sub- 
sequently feeding on the fully developed larva* within the seed. 
Mr. O. P. Hay,8 in a late number of the Auk, has an interest- 
ing paj»er on the red-headed woodpecker as a hoarder, showing that 
the bird makes accumulations of beech nuts, pounding them be- E. S. MORSE 
5 
tween the shingles of a roof, wedging them into crevices and stor- 
ing them in cavities in trees. 
The plausible suggestion made by Darwin as to the agency of 
aquatic birds in the wide dispersal of fresh-water mollusks, was 
singularly confirmed several years after by Mr. Arthur F. Gray 
shooting a duck which had clinging to one of its toes a fresh-water 
mussel. Dr. J. W. Fewkes9 has recently recorded the shooting of 
a duck in Sebec, Maine, which was in like manner transporting a 
fresh-water mussel. The same bird had been observed several 
days before with this curious companion clinging to its foot, and 
had the duck been migrating at the time it might have transported 
the mussel many hundreds of miles. In this connection it would 
be an interesting inquiry as to how far the similarity observed in 
north temperate and circumpolar animals is due to the annual 
migration of birds north and south. 
Mr. William Brewster 10 notes some interesting features in the 
habits of a young Kittiwake gull of the St. Lawrence. He 
brought home a young one, its mate having died of thirst, the 
other one surviving through the accidental discovery that the bird 
drank only salt water! Both the birds obstinately refused to 
drink fresh water. Observations on this bird by Prof. A. Hyatt 
showed how slowly and timidly it acquired the art of swimming 
and flying. The bird when first forced to fly was thrown into the 
air and to the surprise of Professor Hyatt flew with great rapid- 
ity and precision, circling about the house and through the apple 
trees, and, finally, flew near him several times in the greatest agi- 
tation till he caught the bird which was completely exhausted. 
For a long time the bird went through this manoeuvre, showing that 
while he knew how to fly it could not alight, though it finally 
acquired this faculty. Prof. L. A. Lee11 records a remarkable at- 
tack made on him by a marsh hawk, and Mr. Abbott M. Frazer12 
tells of a tame crow deliberately standing on an ant hill and per- 
mitting the ants to remove the parasites from its feathers. In 
this connection a paper by Mr. Joseph F. James 13 should be read 
in which he shows by a number of arguments that animals not 
only present a reasoning faculty, but that this faculty has been 
the result of slow evolution. 
Mr. Xenos Clark,13a in an exceedingly interesting article on the 
music of animals and particularly the music of birds, concludes 
by saying there is “ a theory for the origin of melody, whether 6 
APDKKSS BT 
human or extra-human, which, besides the usual basis of physiolog- 
ical acoustics, employs the law of modified, inherited, selected and 
adapted structure,*, e., the law of evolution.” 
Mr. Ruthven Deane14 reeords cases of albinism nnd melanism in 
a great many families of birds, and Mr. N. C. Brown 15 shows the 
variable abundance of birds at the same locality in different years. 
In this connection it will be of interest to read Dr. L. P. Grata- 
cap’s16 paper entitled “Zoic Maxima, or Periods of Numerical Va- 
riations in Animals.” 
The behavior of wild birds when kept in confinement and the 
attempts made in domesticating them have ulways furnished an in- 
teresting field for study, The curious freaks and impulses which 
they often betray, the changes they show under the new conditions, 
indicate in some measure the plasticity of their organization. 
Hon. John D. Caton,17 in an interesting paper on “Unnatural 
Attachments among Animals,” records a curious fondness shown 
by a crane for a number of pigs, and in another paper on the 
“ Wild Turkey and its Domestication ”18 this writer has made some 
valuable records of the successive changes which take place in the 
bird during this process; changes in color during which the more 
conspicuous features of protective coloring are lost; changes in 
habit in which is seen the undoing or relaxing of those features 
which indicate constant vigilance, from carrying itself in a semi* 
erect attitude, perching on the tallest trees, covering up the eggs 
carefully with leaves when otr the nest, etc., to moving in an hori- 
zontal attitude, perching near the ground, covering the eggs but 
slightly, or carelessly, etc., and losing that wildness which char- 
acterizes the bird in its wild state. At the breeding season, how- 
ever, the females l*ecame wild again, but this was a feature too 
deeply implanted to show modification in the time allotted to Mr. 
Caton’s experiment. The same writer19 has also observed in the 
Hawaiian Islands the effects of reversion to a wild state of differ- 
ent kinds of domestic animals which have from time to time lieen 
carried there. Among other animals lie was fortunate enough to 
observe the undoing stages in the domestic turkey and the assump- 
tion of those features which characterize the wild bird. 
A great many facts illustrating the plainest features of natural 
selection, protective coloring, mimicry, etc., have been recorded 
in our journals from time to time. A brief allusion may be made 
to a few of these. E. S. MORSE 
7 
Prof. Samuel F. Clarke 20 notices a pronounced case of natural 
selection,— a case which must often occur in nature. He kept in 
large glass jars masses of eggs of Amblystoma. As soon as these 
eggs began to hatch he found it difficult to provide the young with 
suitable food, and yet they seemed to thrive. On examination 
many of them were seen to be engaged in nibbling the branehia 
of others, and as they increased in size they were seen to swal- 
low the weaker individuals bodily and hence grow with increased 
rapidity. “ Here then,” he says, “ was a very interesting case of 
natural selection by survival of the fittest. All the weaker individu- 
als being destroyed and actually aiding the stronger ones by serving 
them as food until they could pass through their changes and escape 
to other regions where food was more abundant.” Prof. B. G. Wilder 
has recorded a similar condition of things in a species of spider 
where the young spiders within the case enclosing the eggs were 
feeding on the weaker ones. Prof. Henry L. Osborn21 observes 
a curious case of mimicry at Beaufort in the coloring of a species 
of Ovulum which frequents a species of Leptogorgia. The Ovu- 
lum was yellow in color on the yellow variety of this sea fan, and 
purple-when living on the purple variety. Dr. R. E. C. Stearns 22 
has made some interesting notes on protective coloring in Phry- 
nosomse. Having collected these horned lizards (or toads as they 
are commonly called) in Central California, he has noticed that if 
the ground region they frequent is yellowish, the lizards are with- 
out exception of that color ; if ashen grey, then that color is sim- 
ulated, and this, without exception. Further than this he is “ led 
to believe that a sufficient number of living specimens will show a 
similar protective factor, in degree of development of the scale im- 
brications, tubercles so called, and horns — or, in brief, in the sculpt- 
ure aspect as related to the surface texture of the ground which 
forms the local habitat of these forms.” Dr. A. S. Packard 23 
has observed the partiality of white butterflies for white flowers. 
He notices the European cabbage butterfly, which is white, go di- 
rectly to the white aster and rarely visit the golden rod, while the 
yellow sulphur butterfly visits the yellow flowers of the golden rod 
oftener than those of the aster. The same author24 also observed a 
harmless Egerian moth which deceived the sharp e}Te of a trained 
entomologist by its resemblance to a wasp, and asks why a bird 
may not be equally deceived. Miss Sarah P. Monks25 observed a 
case of mimetic coloring in tadpoles, their tails precisely resem- 
bling the leaves of an aquatic plant, Ludovidgia. 8 
ADDKESS I1T 
Miss Mary E. Martfeldt96 having noticed that the butterfly, I*y- 
rameis huntert, always deposited its eggs on the plant Antennaria, 
she was surprised to find a number of larvae of this butterfly on 
Artemisia. The customary plant being rare in the immediate vi- 
cinity, the butterfly had been misled by the surface resemblance of 
the white cottony leaves of the Artemisia to those of the accus- 
tomed food plant. In this case the larva; all died. 
An unquestionable fact has been finally established by recent 
methods of observation on the habits of insects and other animals, 
and that is that individuals of the same species vary in intelligence : 
that they are not automata; that they are not impelled by a blind 
instinct to perform certain acts with unerring accuracy, but on the 
contrary that they vary and often greatly vary in their ability to 
provide for their young, in their skill to secure sufficient food, in 
their wit to avoid danger,— in other words, they make blunders and 
mistakes and involve their progeny and even their colony in ruin. 
This individual variation in intelligence is brought out very clearly 
by a patient series of observations made by Drs. G. W. and R. G. 
Peckham*7 on the special senses of wasps. They not only re- 
peated many of the experiments of Sir John Lubbock but many 
new and ingenious experiments were devised. Their studies were 
for the pur|>ose of investigating the mental |>ower, sense of hear- 
ing, color, direction, memory, emotion, i>ower of communication, 
general intelligence, etc. An interesting result of their painstak- 
ing work was the determination of individual differences as to the 
faculty of memory and |>ower of distinguishing color and direction. 
This kind of study of the habits of insects has brought to light 
features of the most surprising character. The remarkable studies 
of Sir John Lubbock, Dr. Moggridge ami others in Europe have 
been paralleled in this country not only by the observations above 
quoted, but notably by the lalorsof Itev. II. C. McCook* in his 
studies of the American ants and spiders. In various papers pub- 
lished in the Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural 
Sciences and in the American Naturalist, he has shown many ex- 
traordinary and curious features in the life histories of these ani- 
mals. The great variety and extent of his work must be my excuse 
for not referring to it in detail. 
Prof. G. F. Atkinson,® in studying a new species of trap-door 
spider, confirms the observations of others as to the creature de- 
liberately attaching fragments of moss to the lid of its nest in 
order to conceal its position. Dr. Thomas Meehan 30 describes a E. S. MORSE. 
9 
hornet that was gifted with great intelligence. He saw this in- 
sect struggling with a large locust in unsuccessful attempts to fly 
away *with it. After several fruitless efforts to fly up from the 
ground with his victim he finally dragged it fully thirty feet to a 
tree, to the top of which he laboriously ascended, still clinging to 
his burden, and having attained this elevated position he flew off 
in a horizontal direction with the locust. Dr. Meehan truly says 
“There was more than instinct in this act, there was reasoning on 
certain facts and judgment accordingly and the insect’s judgment 
had proved correct.” 
A curious case of circumspection in ants is recorded by Dr. 
Joseph Leidy.31 In an empty house he observed some ants feed- 
ing on crumbs of bread left by the workman. He at once placed 
pieces of bread in the different rooms in the house only to find 
them the next day covered with ants, which he destroyed by caus- 
ing them to fall into a dish of turpentine. After a few days the 
ants no longer visited the bread and he supposed they had been 
exterminated. A few days after, however, he observed a number 
of ants in the attic feeding on the body of a dead fly. He imme- 
diately got a lot of grasshoppers and distributed their bodies in 
all the rooms, only to find that they were soon covered with ants, 
which he destroyed as before. This treat continued attractive for 
a few days only, when the ants abandoned the food. In brief he 
tried meat, cake and various other articles in turn ; the ants for a 
while frequenting these snares only to learn the danger involved 
and finally avoided them. 
The gradual dispersion of species in recent times is of great in- 
terest, and careful records should be made of the facts as observed 
and a collection of large numbers of individuals made, in order to 
compare them with specimens of the same species in future years, 
to ascertain the variation which may have taken place and the ten- 
dency of that variation. A number of observations have been 
published within the last ten }rears showing new areas of distribu- 
tion. Littorina litorea, which has been creeping along the coast 
since 1869, as recorded by Gray, Verrill and others, has now 
reached the southern side of Long Island Sound as observed by 
Mr. Henry Prime.32 Lioplax sub-carinata, an Ohio river species, 
has been found in the Hudson river at Catskill landing. Limax 
viaximus, first found at Newport, R. I., by Mr. Powel, has since 
been found at Cambridge, Mass., by Professor Hyatt. Bythinia 10 
ADDKKSS BT 
tentaculala, first recorded from Oswego, N. Y., by Rev, W. M. 
Beauchamp,83 is rejwrted as having been found at Burlington, Vt., 
by G. II. Hudson. In the Mohawk river is a thriving community 
of this species, the first having been placed there bjf Dr. James 
Lewis. 
Dr. II. E. C. Stearns,34 in commenting on the occurrence of }f>ja 
arenaria in San Francisco Bay, states that the first record of the 
species in California was made by Dr. Newcomb in 1874. Within 
a few years it lias increased in great numbers, furnishing a new 
food supply for the people. Tho evidence that it is a recent in- 
troduction is seen in the fact that so large and conspicuous a spe- 
cies could not have escaped the eye of the collector. No trace of 
it has ever been found in the numerous shellheaps of California, 
though it* is found on the Asiatic coast, from Kamtchutka to the 
southernmost limits of Japan. Dr. Stearns believes it to have 
been im|>orted with the oyster transplanted from the Atlantic 
coast. From large numbers of the shells that I measured, the low 
index would show that it came from some southern point on the 
Atlantic coast. 
The delicate balance of conditions between organisms, whether 
it lie between individuals of the same species or between widely 
separated groups, is an ini|>ortant feature in the question of survival. 
Prof. S. A. Forbes,35 in a thoughtful study of certain species of 
Kntomostraca in Lake Michigan and the surrounding waters, calls 
attention to the im[>ortant part played by these minute crusta- 
ceans, showing how they furnish almost the entire food for young 
fishes, larger crustaceans and even insect larvie. He writes: “Mol- 
luscs, one would say, could afford to lie indifferent to them, since 
they neither eat them nor are eaten by them, nor seem to come in 
contact with them anywhere, through any of their habits or necessi- 
ties. But for this very reason these two classes afford an excellent 
illustration of the stringent system of reactions by which an as- 
semblage of even the most diverse and seemingly independent or- 
ganisms is held together If there were no entomostraca 
for young fishes to eat, there would be very few fishes indeed to 
feed upon mollusca, and that class would flourish almost without 
restraint; while, on the other hand, if there were no mollusca for 
the support of adult fishes, entomostraca would be relieved from a 
considerable part of the drain upon their numbers, and would mul- 
tiply accordingly.” He is much struck with the fact that in the E. S. MORSE. 
11 
larger bodies of water, the species of entomostraca show an infe- 
rior development in numbers, size and robustness, and in reproduc- 
tive power. Their smaller number and size are doubtless due to 
the relative scarcity of food. “The difference of reproductive 
energ}7, as shown by the much smaller egg-masses borne by the 
lacustrine species, depends upon the vastly greater destruction to 
which the paludinal Crustacea are subjected Many of the latter 
occupy waters liable to be exhausted by drought, with a consequent 
enormous waste of entomostracan life. The opportunity for re- 
production is here greatly limited — in some situations to early 
spring alone—and the chances for destruction of the summer eggs 
in the dry and often dusty soil are so numerous that only the most 
prolific species can maintain themselves under such conditions. 
“Further, the marshes and shallower lakes are the favorite breed- 
ing grounds of fishes, which migrate to them in spawning time, if 
possible, and it is from the entomostraca found here that most 
young fishes get their earliest food supplies—a danger from which 
the deep-water species are measurably free. Not only is a high 
reproductive power therefore rendered unnecessary among the latter 
by their freedom from many dangers to which the shallow-water spe- 
cies are exposed, but in view of the relatively small amount of food 
available for them, a high rate of multiplication would be a positive 
injury, and could result only in wholesale starvation.” 
The effect of birds on insect life has engaged the attention of 
the same author.36 His inquiry was to ascertain whether birds orig- 
inated any oscillations in the numerical proportion of insects upon 
which they feed. Many interesting facts are given which space 
forbids quoting. 
A number of contributions have been made on the influence of 
environment and on geographical variation, to some of which refer- 
ence must be made. Prof. Alpheus Hyatt37 bears unequivocal tes- 
timony to the Derivative theory and recognizes clearly the influence 
of external surroundings in a memoir on the cephalopoda, when 
in stating the law of organic equivalence he says : “The action of 
physical changes takes effect upon the irritable organism, which 
necessarily responds to external stimulants by an internal reaction 
or effort. This action from within upon the parts of the organism 
modifies their hereditary forms by the production of new growths 
or changes which are, therefore, adapted to the conditions of the 
habitat or the physical agents and forces from which they directly 12 
ADDKKSS BT 
or indirectly originate ;** or, slightly changing this interpretation 
in accordance with the same facts, each individual is more or less 
susceptible to the action of physical influences and those which re- 
spond most quickly to these influences come more promptly in 
harmony with their environment which is natural selection, pure 
and simple. 
Mr. Charles Morris,38 in a series of papers on “Organic Physics’* 
and the “Polar Organization of Animals,” presents many new and 
suggestive thoughts on the physico-chemical action in life and devel- 
opment. He concludes that “ there are inherent in the germ en- 
ergies and tendencies, chemical, molecular, or whatever we choose 
to call them, adapted to the complete unfoldinent of the typical 
form ; but, as appears evident, their operation can be checked by in- 
fluences from external nature. There is a struggle between these 
contact influences and the innate organic tendencies.” 
Under geographical variation many interesting facts have been 
added since Professor Baird, I)r. Allen and Mr. Kidgway pub- 
lished their capital discoveries, calling attention to the variations 
observed in birds and mammals coincident with their latitudinal 
range. William Bartram, grandnephew of the famous Itotanist 
John Bartram, alludes to the effect of climate in modifying species. 
In speaking of birds he says: “the different soil and situation of 
the country may have contributed in some measure in forming and 
establishing the difference in size and qualities betwixt them.” 
Dr. J. A. Allen39 shows marked geographical variation among 
North American mammals in res|>ect to size. He shows that 
“ 1. The maximum physical development of the individual is at- 
tained when the conditions of environment are most favorable to 
the life of the species. 2. The largest species of n group (genus, 
sub-family, or family, as the case may be) are found when the 
group to which they severally belong reaches its highest devel- 
opment, or when it has what may be termed its centre of distribu- 
tion. 3. The most typical or most generalized representatives 
of a group are found also near the centre of distribution, outlying 
forms being generally more or less aberrant or specialized.” In 
the study of the eggs of birds of the same species, north and 
south, Dr. Allen shows that in the south the eggs are less in 
number and smaller in size.40 Mr. Robert Kidgway41 calls at- 
tention to the geographical variation observed in Dendrceca. 
The same author,49 in a discussion of a paper by Salvin in E. S. MORSE 
13 
the Transactions of the Zoological Society of London, on the 
relationships between the birds of Guadalupe and the mainland, 
refers to the present genesis of species, and points to the increase 
in size of the bill and feet, the shorter tail and wings and darker 
colors, as characterizing them. 
Dr. E. C. Coues,43 in his studies regarding geographical varia- 
tion in color among North American Insectivorous mammals, says : 
“My studies up to the present go to show a very interesting par- 
allelism with the state of the case I have determined for other 
small mammals, notably the mice and gophers, and which my 
friend Mr. Allen has admirably brought out in his studies of the 
squirrels. In some cases I find almost identical effects of climatic, 
or other conditions upon the shrews and the mice of particular lo- 
calities, by which they both acquire the same facies loci. Present 
indications are that the normal variability of the shrews in size, 
shape and color is not less than has been determined to hold good 
in various other families of mammals.” In this memoir Dr. Coues 
has verified a curious fact first pointed out by Professor Baird, of 
the modifications of the premolar dentition which the western 
species collectively, as compared with the eastern, have undergone ; 
“A striking peculiarity of all the western species, no matter how 
diverse in other respects, is to have the ‘ third premolar ’ decid- 
edly smaller than the ‘ fourth’, while in all the species east of the 
Rock}' Mountains (with one possible exception) the same tooth is 
as large as, or larger than, the other. Of the fact there is no ques- 
tion ; it may be observed in an instant, and is unmistakable. Its 
significance is another thing. Some of the western species are 
scarcely distinguishable if at all from their respective eastern ana- 
logues, except by this character, and they all show it.” 
Prof. A. Hyatt44 finds in sponges geographical variation in color, 
referring to similar features in birds as recorded by Baird and 
others. 
Prof. David S. Jordan,45 in a paper on the distribution of fresh- 
water fishes, presents a concise series of propositions which gov- 
ern these animals in the United States. They all point to the 
action and importance of physical conditions as governing distri- 
bution. Space will permit only the quoting of the last proposi- 
tion, which is a summing up of his conclusions : “The distribution 
of fresh-water fishes is dependent on (a) fresh-water communica- 
tion ; on (6) character of stream, that is, of water, as to purity, 14 
ADDIIP.SS BT 
depth, rapidity, vegetable growth, etc.; on (c) the character of 
the river bed, as to size, condition of bottom, etc.; on (d) climate, 
as determined by latitude and by elevation al>ove the sea; and fi- 
nally on (e) various unknown factors arising from the nature or the 
past history of the species in question, or from the geological his- 
tory of the rivers.” 
Dr. James I^ewis40 has observed a not unlike condition of things 
in the distribution of the fresh-water mussels of Ohio and Alabama. 
By a series of tables he calls attention to what he believes is thfi 
occurrence of identical ami equivalent sjiecios in the two systems 
of drainage and suggests that, owing to the number of varieties 
characterizing the UhionidcB they may lie identical. This author47 
has also studied the genus Io and its habits and notices its varia- 
tion coincident with latitude and temperature. 
Dr. R. E. C. Stearns,48 in a paper on the circumpolnr distribu- 
tion of certain fresh-water mussels and the identity of certain 
species, unites many hitherto recognized s|)ecies of Anodonta. 
Dr. J. G. Cooper,49 in a study of the fossil and sub-fossil land 
shells of the United States, sees the strongest evidence in support 
of the idea that the older ones are the direct ancestors of certain 
forms living to-day. 
Mr. R. 1*. Whitfield 50 read a paper before the Boston Society 
of Natural History, showing changes produced in Limncea me- 
rjaeoma when kept in an aquarium. Having at the outset three 
specimens, two of them finally died and from the remaining one 
eggs were produced, presumably unimpregnated. These eggs 
hatched, and from these the next year came a second generation, 
which in turn produced a third generation the following year. The 
animal of Limnrea is hermaphrodite. Nevertheless besides dimin- 
ished size in the shell it was observed that the male parts hod dis- 
appeared and the liver had become considerably reduced in size. 
He shows that a dioecious species had in a short time become mo- 
noecious as a result of the new physical conditions of life in the 
constricted quarters of an aquarium. 
An instructive paper by Dr. W. D. Hartman,51 on the genus Pur- 
tula of the Hawaiian Islands, shows in the most convincing man- 
ner the effect of environment in modifying the species. He finds 
a common occurrence of hybrids among certain forms, the result of 
the union of proximate speejes. This hybridization occurring even 
between arboreal and ground species, Dr. Hartman states “that E. S. MORSE. 
15 
gravid females are often washed by heavy rains from a favored po- 
sition to drier levels, where after a few generations the progeny 
become depauperated, and so stunted in size as to be mistaken for 
distinct species.” Dr. W. H. Dali,52 in some general considera- 
tions regarding the environment of the deep-sea mollusks as com- 
pared with the shallow-water and littoral forms, shows how much the 
littoral forms have to contend with in the struggle for existence as 
compared with the deep-sea forms, and the delicate sculpture and 
extreme fragility of many of the shells occurring in the deeper 
abysses of the sea are to be explained on the ground of their habi- 
tat. Dr. Carl F. Gissler53 has presented some interesting evi- 
dences of the effect of chemico-physical influences in the evolution 
of the branchipod crustaceans. 
The effect of mechanical strains as producing like morphologi- 
cal effects has been treated in a masterly way by Dr. John A. 
Ryder.54 He cites the vertebral axes of turtles and extinct arma- 
dillos, also the sacra of birds and mammals, and says “These 
observed coincidences, it is believed, are neither accidental, nor 
designed by an active cause external to these organisms or their 
cosmic environment. I would rather believe that the structures, 
so far as they have been evolved in parallel or similar ways, are 
the results of like forces conditioning growth and nutrition in defi- 
nite modes and determinate directions. The manner of incidence 
of the modifying forces being in all cases determined by the vol- 
untary actions of the organisms, the actions in turn are deter- 
mined by the degree of intelligence of the animal manifesting 
them.” 
In considering the “Lawsof Digital Reduction”55 Doctor Ryder 
gives a concise presentation of the various groups of animals, 
showing in each the line of mechanical strain in the extremities 
and its correlation with the increased development of those digits 
bearing this strain, and the consequent reduction or atrophy of 
those digits out of this line. These considerations led him to the 
following conclusions : 
I. “ That the mechanical force used in locomotion during the 
struggle for existence has determined the digits which are now 
performing the pedal function in such groups as have undergone 
digital reduction. 
II. That where the distribution of mechanical strains has been 
alike upon all the digits of the manus or pes, or both, they have 
remained in a state of approximate uniformity of development. 16 
ADDRESS BT 
III. It is held that these views are Lnmarkian and not Darwin- 
ian ; that is, that they more especially take cognizance of mechan- 
ical force as a mutating factor in evolution, in accordance with the 
doctrine of the correlation of forces.” 
Doctor ltyder further says 44 It seems a most convincing proof 
of the doctrine of descent to (ind man un instance of the same 
kind of specialization determined by the manner of the distribu- 
tion of strains as is so often found among the lower groups, such 
as the horses, sloths, jumping mice and even-toed ungulateM.” 
In another memoir56 Doctor Ryder considers the mechanical 
motion in forming and modifying teeth. Considering first the 
simplest form of movement in the mammal's jaw, opening and 
closing, without fore and aft or lateral movement, he shows the 
successive changes going on coincident with the more complex 
movements of the jaw, and that the enamel foldings, ridges, 
crests, etc., have apparently been modified in conformity with the 
ways in which the force used in mastication was exerted. 
Prof. A. Hyatt,57 in an exhaustive study of the Planorbis of 
Steinheim, shows among other things the effect of gravitation as 
accounting for the form of the inollusk shell, citing examples 
from all the classes and even drawing examples from other sub- 
kingdoms to support his views. 
Prof. E. D. Cope,5* in a memoir on Archsestbetism, considers the 
hypothesis of use ami effort, the office of consciousness, etc. lie 
attempts to show that consciousness is primitive and a cause of 
evolution. lie sustains his thesis by a series of arguments which, 
if not beyond my grasp, would be too exteusive to present here. 
I can only repeat the regret I expressed in the Hutralo address: 
namely, that neither Professor Cope nor Professor Hyatt has yet 
been induced to present to the public an illustrated and simple out- 
line of their theories. Such a demonstration, I am sure, would he 
acceptable not only to the public but to many scientific students 
as well. While these two eminent naturalists believe fully in the 
Derivative theory they insist that Darwin’s theory is inadequate 
to explain many of the phenomena and facts which they encounter 
in their studies. Darwin has distinctly said in his first edition of 
the ‘‘Origin of Species,” **I am convinced that natural selection 
has been the main but not the exclusive means of modification 
and in his sixth edition of the same work, in quoting these words, 
he laments that he is still misunderstood on this point. The the- 
ory of acceleration and retardation of these authors is, if 1 under- e. s. MORSE. 
17 
stand it rightly, a very plain case of natural selection. It was 
inevitable that those individuals that matured the quickest were 
better prepared to defend themselves, were quicker in the field, 
were able to give their offspring an earlier start in the season, were 
in every way more fitted to survive than those which matured later. 
It is assumed that this is a law when, to my mind, it seems the 
simplest result of natural selection. Instead of overriding it, it is 
only a conspicuous result and proof of it. 
A parallel case may be seen in the increase in size of the brain 
in the vertebrates, and conspicuously in the higher vertebrates, 
since their first appearance in geological history. The individual 
brain clearly varies in size and it does not require a great effort to 
perceive how in the long run the greater brain survives in the com- 
plex struggle for existence. Associated with the greater develop- 
ment, parts that were freely used for locomotion before are now 
compelled to perform additional service, and through the law of use 
and effort, which all admit as an important factor, organs are mod- 
ified in structure, the anterior portion of the body assumes a new 
aspect; and iff was on the character of these parts and aspects that 
Professor Dana was led to formulate his comprehensive and ingen- 
ious principle of Cephalization. It is a result and not a cause. 
And so I believe, though with great deference to Cope and Hyatt, 
that the laws of acceleration and retardation, exact parallelisms, 
inexact parallelisms and still more inexact parallelisms, and many 
other laws and theories advanced by these gentlemen, are not causes 
but effects, to be explained by the doctrine of natural selection 
and survival of the fittest. 
The connecting links and intermediate forms which the skeptical 
public so hungrily demand are continually being discovered. 
Great gaps are being closed up rapidly, but the records of this 
work being published in the journals of our scientific societies are 
hidden from the public eye as much as if they had been published 
in Coptic. So rapidly have these missing links been established 
that the general zoologist finds it difficult to keep up with the 
progi’ess made in this direction. He can hardly realize the com- 
pletion of so many branches of the genealogical tree. 
Professor Cope,59 who has accomplished so much in this direction, 
says : “Those who have, during the last ten years, devoted them- 
selves to this study have been rewarded by the discovery of the 
course of development of many lines of animals, so that it is now 18 
ADDltKSS 11Y 
possible to show the kind of changes in structure which have re- 
sulted in the species of animals with which we are fumiliar us liv- 
ing on the surface of the earth at the present time. Not that this 
continent has given us the parentage of all forms of animal life, 
or all forms of animuls with skeletons, or vertebra*, but it bus 
given us many of them. To tuke the vertcbruta, we have obtained 
the long-since extinct ancestor of the very lowest vertebrates. 
Then we have discovered the ancestor of the true llshes. We have 
the uucestor of all the reptiles, of the birds, and of the mummuls. 
If we consider the mammals, or milk-givers, separately, we have 
traced up a great many lines to their points of departure from very 
primitive things. Thus we have obtained the genealogical trees 
of the deer, the camels, the musk, the horse, the tapir, and the rhi- 
noceros, of the cats and dogs, of the lemurs and monkeys, und 
have im|K>rtant evidence as to the origin of man.” 
In 1874 he predicted that the ancestor of all the mammals would 
be a five-toed, flat-footed walker with tubercular molar teeth, or in 
exact language a peutadactyle, plantigrade bunodont. Seven years 
after he obtained evidences that such a type of multimuls abound- 
ed in North America during the early Eoceue Tertiary period. 
Trot. Cope,60 in his phytogeny of the camels, shows a remarkable 
parallel to that of the horse, both forms appearing in the lower 
Eocene. Mr. Eugene N. fc>. Kingueberg61 believes he has found in 
a thin layer of limestone at Gasport, N. Y., a deposit in which u 
number of forms of Urachiopods seem to present the intermediate 
stages betweeu certain brachiopods common to the Clinton and the 
group of rocks immediately above. While the majority of species 
in this deposit belong to the Niagara, there are among the lossils 
met with, three species of brachiopods which were supposed to have 
passed out of existence with the Clinton, lie finds in this bed 
thirty-two forms peculiar to the Niagara, eleven common to Niag- 
ara and Clinton, three belonging to the Clinton and two character- 
istic forms of the transition group. Many of these show intermediate 
characters. 
Trof. 11. S. Williams,68 in his paleontological studies of the life 
history of Spirijer larvis, in which he traces the aucestral line of 
this creature, says: “Whatever theoretical description we may give 
to species, here are, in the first place, an abundance of individual 
organisms whose remains are found in the upper Siluriau rocks of 
Europe, Great Britain and America, presenting a few clearly marked 
distinctive characters, which are found variously developed in the E. S. MORSE. 
19 
individual forms, but so grading in the various varieties as to 
cause careful naturalists to associate them as varieties of a single 
species.” 
Dr. C. A. White, 63 in his comparisons of the fresh-water mus- 
sels and associated mollusks of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic periods 
with living species, expresses his belief that the present Unios of 
North America, particularly those forms allied to TJnio clavus, have 
come down in an unbroken line from the Jurassic and possibly from 
earlier times. He shows that thus far all the fossil Unios have 
been obtained from lacustrine deposits, none of these beds being 
distinctly fluviatile. He furthermore calls attention to the fact that 
“ these lacustrine formations are of very great extent in western 
North America, and, without doubt, the lakes in which they were 
deposited were caused by encircling bands of rising land during 
the elevation of the continent. These great land-locked waters 
were at first brackish, but finally became, and for a long time re- 
mained, fresh, continuing so until their final desiccation.” From 
this commingling of salt and fresh water he justly assumes that 
many modifications arose in the forms of Unios subjected to these 
influences and hence has resulted a variety of forms which have 
gone on continually widening to the present day. 
Prof. A. G. Wetherby, 64 in a paper on the geographical distri- 
bution of certain fresh-water mollusca and the possible cause of 
their variation, shows the paucity of forms of Unionidae on the Pa- 
cific and Atlantic coasts as compared to the richness and profusion 
of those forms in the central portion of the continents. He re- 
marks also on the absence of the family Strepotomidae, east of the 
Alleghanies. He assumes that the first fresh-water forms were 
lacustrine. He points out the well-known geological fact of large 
inland enclosures and their subsequent drainage, and shows the 
vicissitudes which must have been encountered by species in the 
variety of physical conditions implied by these changes. In this 
connection I may be permitted to call attention to the fact that at 
a meeting of this Association, at Hartford, in 1874, I made a com- 
munication on the origin of the North American Unionidae in which 
I urged some of the points made by Dr. White and Professor Weth- 
erby.* 
*The following is a brief abstract which was published in the Hartford Courant 
August, 1874. “Mr. Morse in explaining the origin of the North American Unionid* did 
not pretend to point out the absolute liue ot descent in these forms, but wished to call 
attention to some curious features in the possible derivation of the fresh-water families 
ofMollusks from cognate genera living in salt water. It is observed, first, that the 20 
ADDRESS BT 
Dr. Thomas II. Streets,18&in studying the immature plmnageof the 
North American shrikes, was much struck with the closo resem- 
blance between the plumage of the young of Sula cyanopa and the 
adult plumage of another species. Recalling a generalization made 
by Darwin that “when the young differs in color from the adult, 
and the colors of the former are not, as far as we can see, of any 
special service, they may generally lie attributed, like various 
embryological structures, to the retention by the young of the 
characters of an early progenitor.” He then shows the grndation 
between the several species of shrikes from this stand|>oint and 
traces their descent from a common ancestor. 
Prof. S. A. Forbes,M in a study of the “ Blind Cave Fish ami 
their Allies,” is led to review the conclusions reached by Prof. 
F. W. Putnam in his interesting pnfiers on the subject. Professor 
Putnam brought forth a number of arguments which seemed to him 
to militate against the views urged by evolutionists that their pecu- 
liar characters were adaptive and the result of their cave life. He 
was led to the conclusion that the absence of light had not brought 
about the atrophy of the eyes, the development of special sense 
organs, and the bleaching of the skin. In referring to another cave 
fish, Chologaster, with eyes fully developed, it was urged that the 
argument in regard to eyeless fishes could have no weight. In re- 
sponse to this it was answered that possibly Chologaster had not 
been subjected to subterranean infiuences long enough to be af- 
fected, and this objection was anticipated by urging that we have 
no right to assume that Chologaster is a more recent inhabitant of 
the caves, until proven. 
The discovery of another species of Chologaster, taken from a 
spring at the base of a limestone cliffin Illinois, has given Professor 
Forbes an opportunity to make careful comparisons with the cave 
Chologaster. He says in regard to it “The most important and 
few families of frexh-wxter n>olla*ka are Intimately related to Utoae forma which lire In 
the ><i between high- and low water mark, and thoae which can withstand the Influence 
of brackiah water. He cited certain familiea of freah-water mollnaka which are eo 
closely related to tidal forma aa hardly to tie distinguished from them. .... 
In explaining the immenae number of apeclea of fresh-water muaaela in America com- 
pared to the very few forma In Europe, we might look to an explanation of tbia feature 
In the paet geological hiatory of the two contlnenU. 
In Europe there hare been no great inland aeaa, while In America Ita peat hiatory 
ahowa the enclosing of large traeta of water in which freahening from braekl*b water 
went on, and while many forma anccumbed to thcae changed conditlona, only those 
forma anrrired which reaemble certain HUoral apeciea. And with thecnrioua mod I fl- 
ea lion» that mnat hare taken place In theae changed conditlona, one getaapoealble ex- 
planation of the great rartety of molluaka In our weatern rirera.*’ E. S. MORSE. 
21 
interesting peculiarity of this species indicates a more advanced 
stage of adaptation to a subterranean life than that of its conge- 
ners.” Referring to Professor Putnam’s arguments, Professor 
Forbes says that “the discovery of a species of Chologaster, which 
frequents external waters, of an immediate subterranean origin, sup- 
plies all needed proof that the genus either has a shorter subterranean 
history than Amblj'opsis, or, at any rate, has remained less closely 
confined to subterranean situations ; and that in either case the oc- 
currence of eyes, partial absence of sensory papillae and persistence 
in color, are thus accounted for consistently with the doctrine of 
‘descent with modification.’ ” In this connection it may be of in- 
terest to read the curious fact recorded by Mr. S. H. Trowbridge 67 
of the discovery in the Missouri river of a shovel-nosed sturgeon 
which had the skin growing over the eyes, completely inclosing 
them. Dr. S. H. Scudder, 68 in a memoir read before the Na- 
tional Academy, brings forward evidence to show that ordinal fea- 
tures among insects were not differentiated in Palaeozoic times, 
but that “all Palaeozoic insects belonged to a single order which, 
enlarging its scope as outlined by Goldenberg, we may call Palaeo- 
dictyoptera ; in other words, the palaeozoic insect was a generalized 
Hexapod, or more particularly a generalized Heterometabolon.” 
In a memoir on the earliest winged insects of America embrac- 
ing a reexamination of “ The Devonian Insects of New Brunswick” 
published by the author, Dr. Scudder replies to some sharp crit- 
icisms and objections made by Dr. Hagen and pertinently says, 
“That there is no evidence—but the contrary—that Dr. Hagen in 
his investigations uses the ‘theory of descent’ as a working hy- 
pothesis, without which no one studying any group of animals in 
the period of its rise and most rapid evolution can expect to do 
otherwise than stumble and wander astray. To refuse it is to 
merit failure.” 
Prof. J. S. Kingsley,69 in his study of Limulus, regards it is an 
Arachnid, but states that its ancestors take us back to a time when 
the distinctions between the Crustacea and Arachnida were far 
less marked than now. 
Dr. A. S. Packard,70 in a paper on the “Genealogy of the Insects,” 
shows by means of a “genealogical tree” the descent of the class 
from the Thysanura, with some hypothetical creature not unlike 
Scolopendrella, as the probable stem-form of the Hexapods. It is 
through the resemblance the larvae of the different orders of in- 22 
ADDRESS BT 
sects l>ear to various members of the Thysanura that this schemo 
is justified. It may not tie out of place to say here that the use 
of the “genealogical tree,” in suggesting the probable line of de- 
scent of various allied groups, has been severely condemned by 
some as leading to no practical good in classification. It seems 
to me, however, the only clear scheme for the proper working out 
of the ascertained or hypothetical relationships of animals; it is 
thought-exciting, its very attitude provokes studious inquiry and 
suggestive inferences. It may be called the modern tree of knowl- 
edge. 
The modern genealogical tree as used by the biological student 
(and as well by the ethnologist, philologist and others) is a 
graphic diagram of the relationships between groups as understood 
by the projector, and, as such, is a most commendable and useful 
method with which to illustrate his meaning. With additional 
knowledge one can see, at a glance, the points that need strength- 
ening, and he can pare, prune, or even graft new fruits on the old 
stock, or if it is rotten at the trunk, cut it down altogether. These 
trees have always been in vogue with the older naturalists, only, 
in the old style of arboriculture, the trunk was always kept stiflly 
vertical while the branches were bent down and trained horizon- 
tally, being fliinsily attached to the main stem by printers’ devices 
of long and short brackets. In this attitude it reminded one of 
the dwarfed and deformed trees of the Chinese and very properly 
typified the dwarfed and deformed way of looking at classification. 
Never was the provisional use of a genealogical tree more com- 
pletely justified than in a memoir by I>r. Alexander Agassiz 71 on 
the “Connection lietween Cretaceous and Kchinid Fauns.” He 
certainly speaks in no uncertain terms when in considering the 
Spatangoids of the chalk he says, “They lead us directly through 
the Palreostoininae and the Collyriti«lae to the Aiianehytid* which 
have persisted to the present day,” and other relationships of the 
same nature are repeatedly urged as would not only justify the use 
of the genealogical diagram against which he so strongly inveighed 
in his admirable address before this Association at the Boston 
meeting, but had he adopted this method a much clearer view of 
the very points he wished to emphasize would have been afforded 
his readers. 
It was the strictures of Agassiz above referred to that led Prof. 
W. K. Brooks78 to write a paper on the subject of “Speculative 23 
E. S. MORSE 
Zoology” in which he most earnestly and ably defends the use of 
genealogical diagrams and justly says, “If phylogenetic specula- 
tions retard science, speculations upon homology must do the 
same thing, and the only way to avoid danger will be to stick to 
facts, and, stripping our science of all that renders it worthy of 
thinking men, to become mere observing machines.” 
Since 1876 Professor Marsh and Professor Cope have in various 
journals and Government publications presented the results of 
their discoveries of the past vertebrate life of North America. The 
General Government has published the two great monographs of 
Professor Marsh on the Dinocerata, an extinct order of gigantic 
mammals, and the Odontornithes, an order of extinct toothed birds, 
as well as Professor Cope’s great volume on the Tertiary Verte- 
brata besides other memoirs by the same authors. Space will for- 
bid more than a passing allusion to the varied and remarkable ad- 
ditions to our knowledge of extinct vertebrate life made by these 
naturalists. 
Had a moiety of the work accomplished by these investigators 
been known to Geoffroy St. Hilaire the theory of descent would 
have been established long before Darwin, though to Darwin and 
Wallace belongs the full credit of defining the true cause. Leidy, 
Marsh and Cope have not only brought to light a great number of 
curious beasts, many of them of gigantic and unique proportions, 
but forms revealing in their structure the solution of many mor- 
phological puzzles and throwing light on the derivation of many 
obscure parts. 
The discovery in the western tertiaries of multitudes of huge 
and monstrous mammals and, earlier still, of gigantic and equally 
monstrous reptiles, naturally led at once to an inquiry as to the 
cause of their extinction. “Nothing can be more astonishing,” 
says Prof. Joseph LeConte,73 “ than the abundance, variety and 
prodigious size of Reptiles in America up to the very close of the 
Cretaceous, and the complete absence of all the grander and 
more characteristic forms in the lowest Tertiary ; unless, indeed, 
it be the correlative fact of the complete absence of mammals in 
the Cretaceous and their appearance in great numbers and vari- 
ety in the lowest Tertiary. ...” The wave of reptilian evo- 
lution had just risen to its crest, and perhaps was ready to break, 
when it was met and overwhelmed by the rising wave of mammal- 
ian Evolution.” In this paper of LeConte’s, which is entitled “On 24 
ADDRESS BT 
Critical Periods in the History of the Earth and their Relation to 
Evolution: and on the Quaternary as such a Period,” may he 
found an excellent rejoinder of Prof. Clarence King's lecture before 
the Sheffield Scientific School on the subject of Catastrophism and 
Evolution. 
Among the most interesting discoveries connected with these 
creatures is the determination by Professor Marsh74 that these early 
mammals, birds and reptiles had brains of diminutive proportions. 
He says in regard to the order Dinocerata, a group of giguntic mam* 
mats whose remains have been found in the tertiary deposits of 
the Rocky Mountain region, that they are the most remarkable of 
the many remarkable forms brought to light. The brain of these 
creatures was remarkable for its diminutive proportion. So small 
indeed was the brain of Uinoceraa mirabile that it could “appar- 
ently have been drawn through the neural canal of all the presaeral 
vertebra.” In alluding to the successive disappearance of the large 
brutes, the cause is not difficult to find : “ The small brain, flighty 
specialized characters, and huge bulk, rendered them incapable of 
adapting themselves to new conditions, and a change of surround- 
ings brought extinction. The existing Proboscidians must soon 
disappear, for similar reasons. Smaller mammals, with larger 
brains, and more plastic structure, readily adapt themselves to their 
environment, and survive, or even send off new and vigorous lines. 
The Dinocerata with their very diminutive brain, fixed characters, 
and massive frames, flourished as long as the conditions were es- 
pecially favorable, but, with the first geological change, they per- 
ished, and left no descendants.” Professor Marsh says that the 
brain of Dinoceras was in fact the most reptilian brain in any 
known mammal. 
Professor Cope 75 in describing the brain of Coryphodon from 
the deposits of New Mexico, says: “The large size of the middle 
brain and olfactory lobes gives the brain as much the ap|>earance 
of that of a lizard as of a mammal.” This is one of the lowest 
mammalian brains known. There are others from the lower Eo- 
cene with equally low brains as Arctocyon of Gervais and Uinta- 
theriuin of Marsh. Cope believes that the tyj>e of brain of these 
early creatures is so distinct as to necessitate the erection of a 
third sub-class of equal rank with the groups Gyrencephala and 
Lycencephala which he would define as the Proleucephala. He 
shows their approximation to reptiles. e. s. MORSE. 
25 
Cope 76 refers to Gratiolet as showing that a great development 
of the olfactory is a character of an inferior type ; in fact, the more 
we ascend into paleontological antiquity, the more we find that the 
olfactory lobes display a greater development in comparison with 
the cerebral hemispheres. Dr. B. G. Wilder77 has shown that in 
the lamprey the only part which can be regarded as a cerebral hem- 
isphere lies laterad of the olfactory lobe. In Dipnoi he finds 
that the cerebral outgrowth is ventrad. In another paper78 he 
says: “ In either of these directions in which what may be re- 
garded as the special organ of the mind is projected among these 
low or generalized forms, there would seem to be mechanical ob- 
stacles to any considerable expansion ; but dorsally there is op- 
portunity for comparatively unlimited extension, and it is in this 
direction that the hemispheres begin to develop in the Amphibia 
and attain such enormous growth in Birds and Mammals.” How 
far the small brain and presumably stolid intellects brought about 
the extinction of the huge tertiary mammals may be better un- 
derstood by the suggestions offered by Prof. A. E. Verrill79 in a 
lecture at Yale College entitled “ Facts Illustrative of the Dar- 
winian Theory.” He shows what an important factor parental 
instinct is in the evolution of species. He regards the lack of 
parental care “ as one of the probable causes, though usually over- 
looked, of the extinction of many of the large and powerful reptiles 
of the mesozoic age and of the large mammals of the tertiary.” 
He says : “ The very small size of the brain and its low organization 
in these early animals are now well known, and we are justified in 
believing that their intelligence or sagacity was correspondingly 
low. They were doubtless stupid and sluggish in their habits, but 
probably had great powers of active and passive resistance against 
correspondingly stupid carnivorous species. But unless the helpless 
young were protected by their parents, they would quickly have 
been destroyed ; and such species might, in this way, have been 
rapidly exterminated whenever they came in contact with new 
forms of carnivorous animals, having the instinct to destroy the 
new-born young of mammals, and the eggs and young of ovipa- 
rous reptiles. Thus it would have come about, that the more in- 
telligent forms, by the development of the parental instinct for 
the active protection of their young against their enemies, would 
have survived longest, and therefore would have transmitted this 
instinct, with other correlated cerebral developments, to their de- 
scendants.” 26 
ADDUESS 1)T 
Prof. John Fiske, in his Cosmic Philosophy, arrived at n simi- 
lar conclusion in regard to early man. He showed that when va- 
riations in intelligence became more important than variations in 
physical structure, then they were seized upon to the relative ex- 
clusion of the latter. 
The derivative theory has not only clearly revealed the fact that 
animals have been derived from preexisting forms, but it shows 
even more clearly that organs have been evolved as well. It is 
difficult in a general review of this nature to separate clearly the 
two classes of facts. 
Professor Cope 80 has traced the genesis of the quadritubercular 
tooth in the mammals of the present day. He finds that the type 
of the superior molar tooth of the mammals of the Puerco epoch 
was triangular or tritubercular, that is, with two external and one 
internal tubercle. Of forty-one species of mammals of this epoch 
all but four of them had this type of tooth. lie finds that this 
tooth exists to day only in the insectivorous and carnivorous mar- 
supials. In brief he shows a gradual change taking place from the 
early primitive type of tooth in the gradual development of an- 
other tubercle. The same author,81 in defining the characters of an 
ancient order of mammals, the Atnhlypoda, says they are the most 
generalized order of hoofed mammals, )>eing intermediate in the 
structure of their limbs and feet between the Proboscidia, the 
Perissodactylaand Artiodactyla, which fact together with the small 
size of the brain places them in antecedent relation to the latter, 
in a systematic sense, connecting them with the lower mammals 
with small and smooth brains still in existence; and in a phylo- 
genetic sense since they precede the other orders in time, they 
stand in the relation of ancestors. 
Professor Cope,84 in a paper read before this Association on the 
44 Classification of the Ungulata,” gives special attention to the 
arrangement and character of the carpal and tarsal bones. He 
shows 44 that the weaker structure of the carpus and tarsus appears 
first in time ; that the stronger structure ap|>eared first in the pos- 
terior limbs, and that the interlocking structure has greatly mul- 
tiplied, while the linear has dwindled and mostly disappeared. 
Here is a direct connection between mechanical excellence and 
survival.” 
In the light of Mr. Caldwell's unquestionable determination 
of the oviparous character of that curious mammal, the duck-bill E. S. MORSE. 
27 
mole, associated with its known reptilian bearings as deduced from 
its skeleton and other features, the deductions of Professor Cope 83 
regarding the “Relations between the Theromorphous Reptiles and 
the Monotreme Mammalia” are of great interest. 
In the Theromorpha are two divisions, one of which, the Pely- 
cosauria, is limited to the Permian, and of one of this group he 
makes the following comparisons: “ 1. The relations and num- 
ber of the bones of the posterior foot are those of the Mammalia 
much more than those of the Reptilia. 2. The relations of the 
astragalus and calcaneum to each other are as in the Monotreme 
Platypus anatinus. 3. The articulation of the fibula with both cal- 
caneum and astragalus is as in the Monotreme order of mammals.” 
In brief he shows the affinity of this reptile to be with the 
monotremes, and that the affinities are very important in the light 
of Mr. Caldwell’s researches, and the further fact that the devel- 
opment of the egg is meroblastic confirms, so to speak, the reptil- 
ian affinities of the monotremes. 
Here then are a series of observations by different observers 
from different standpoints, all telling the same story. Osteolo- 
gists have long ago pointed out the reptilian affinities of the mon- 
otremes from the character of the skeleton. The anatomists in 
like manner have insisted upon certain reptilian characters as 
well as avian characters from its internal structure. A trained 
zoologist now studies it on the ground and finds it laying true 
eggs, a fact that had been insisted upon several times in the present 
century. More significant still, the study of these eggs shows 
that they go through a reptilian mode of development. And now 
the paleontologist brings to light the remains of a reptile from 
the Permian rocks and again establishes the same relations. 
In this connection the examination by Dr. Henry C. Chapman84 
of a foetal kangaroo and its membranes is of interest. The foetus he 
examined was fourteen days old. He states that it had no true 
placenta and says “ If the parts in question have been truthfully 
described and correctly interpreted, as partly bridging over the 
gap between the placental and non-placental vertebrates, they 
supply exactly what the theory of evolution demands and furnish, 
therefore, one more proof of the truth of that doctrine.” 
To those who have already been startled by the memoir of Dr. 
W. Baldwin Spencer on the presence and structure of the pineal 
gland in Lacertilia and the evidence that it represents a third eye 28 
adpuess ur 
in a rudimentary condition, it will be interesting to know that 
among some of the earlier mammals the pineal gland may have 
assumed functional importance as an eye. Prof. Henry P. Os- 
born 85 shows that in the skull of the curious mammal Tritylodon, 
of Owen, there is seen a parietal foramen in exactly the same po- 
sition and relation as in the lizard Sphenodon. 
Professor Osborn regards this fact of remarkable interest, as it 
adds greatly to the rapidly accumulating evidence for the reptilian 
affinities of the mammalia. Professor Owen, in the description of 
this unaccountable opening, suggested that it might be due to 
posthumous injury. 
Professor Marsh,86 in a description of the skull of Diplodocus, 
a Dinosaur, describes a fontauelle in the parietal on the median 
line directly over the cerebral cavity. He adds, however, that 
this may be merely an individual variation. 
Professor Cope87 observes an enormous fronto-parietal foramen 
in the skull of Emjtedodes molar is, a curious creature from the 
Permian. 
It would appear evident from these facts that at one time the 
pineal gland, which in the mammals is in a rudimentary condition 
and in certain Lacertilia sufficiently perfect, as an eye, to be sen- 
sitive to light impressions at least, was, in certain extinct mam- 
mals and reptiles, of large size and functionally active. It is 
a significant fact that no sooner does some one opposed to evolu- 
tion undertake to lay down the law by setting a bouudary to type 
features, than a discovery is made that breaks down the barrier. 
Thus Dr. Thomas Dwight,88 in an interesting memoir on the “Sig- 
nificance of Bone Structure” in which he makes a brave defence for 
teleology, says, in speaking of the persistence of thu vertebrate 
plan, “ There are never, for instance, more than two eyes or one 
mouth or two pairs of limbs,” and, lo! an extra eye is immedi- 
ately added. 
Dr. Spencer Trotter 89 has made a study of the collar bone and 
its significance, in which he accounts for its presence or absence in 
mammalia by correlating it with the life habits of the animal in 
the use of the fore limb. He says “ Kvery fully developed tissue 
in an organism is needed or it would not be there; and just so 
soon as by increasing change in life and habits it becomes a fac- 
tor of less and less importance to the animal, it fails more and 
more to attain its former standard of development, and in time E. S. MORSE. 
29 
falls back to the primitive condition from which it arose and finally 
disappears.” 
Many new and interesting facts have been added sustaining the 
affinity between the birds and reptiles. Prof. O. C. Marsh 90 made 
a careful study of the Archeopteryx in the British Museum. The 
new points he has added bring out still more strongly the extraordi- 
nary characters blended in this creature. Among other features 
he discovered the separate condition of the pelvic bones, and 
shows that while it must be considered a bird, yet it has true teeth, 
bi-concave vertebrae, three separate fingers in each hand, all fur- 
nished with claws, metatarsals and metacarpals, equally unanchy- 
losed and the pelvic bones separate, as already mentioned. 
Dr. J. Amory Jeffries,91 in a study of the claws and spurs on 
birds’ wings, has presented an interesting table showing the num- 
ber of phalanges in each finger, from the highest to the lowest 
family of birds, with the presence or absence of claws recorded for 
each finger. This table shows very clearly that the higher birds 
have fewer phalanges and no claws, and as one approaches the 
lower families the phalanges increase in number, the first finger 
having two phalanges and the second and third fingers being tipped 
with claws. 
In a brief study of the tarsus of low aquatic birds,92 made with 
special reference to the interpretation of the ascending process of 
the astragalus with the intermedium of reptiles, I observed a sep- 
arate centre of ossification for this so-called process, observed its 
unquestionable position between the tibiale and fibulare, its in- 
crease in size with the growth of the bird and its final anchylosis 
with the proximal tarsal bones. In the bones of a young Dinornis, 
which through the courtesy of Dr. Henry Woodward I was kindly 
permitted to examine in the British Museum, the ascending proc- 
ess was large and conspicuous and firmly anchylosed with the co- 
ossified tarsals to the distal end of the tibia. Professor Marsh,93 
in a study of the metatarsal bones of Ceratosaurus, a Dinosaur 
discovered by him, found that the metatarsals coossified in the 
same manner as those of the Penguin. 
The question as to the existence of a sternum in Dinosaurian 
reptiles has long been in doubt. Professor Marsh 94 has, however, 
discovered in Brontosaurus, one of the largest known Dinosaurs, 
two flat bones which he regards as clearly belonging to the sternum. 
They correspond to the immature stage of similar parts in birds. 30 
address nr 
Dr. Alexander Agassiz,95 in a study of the young stages of cer- 
tain osseous fishes, shows that while the tail is a modified heterocer- 
cal one, it is for all that in complete accordance with embryonic 
growth and paleontological development; and, independently, Dr. 
John A. Ryder96 finds that “the median fins of fishes normally 
present five well-marked conditions of structure which correspond 
inexactly to as many stages of development, which, in typical 
fishes, succeed each other in the order of time.” 
Mr. James K. Thatcher96* in a study of the “Median and Paired 
Fins, a contribution to the history of vertebrate limbs” shows “that 
the limbs with their girdles were derived from a series of similar 
simple parallel rays, and that they were a specialization of the 
continuous lateral folds or fins evidenced in embryos, which were 
with some probability homologous with the lateral folds or meta- 
pleura of the adult Amphioxus.” 
A great amount of work has been done in making clear the ear- 
lier stages in the development of animals and breaking down the 
hard and fast lines which were formerly supposed to exist between 
the larger divisions. Dr. C. S. Minot,97 in a series of papers on 
Comparative Embryology, in referring to the work accomplished 
says “These researches have completely altered the whole science 
of comparative anatomy and animal morphology by entirely up- 
setting a large part of Cuvier’s classification ami the idea of types 
upon which it was based, substituting the demonstration of the fun- 
damental identity of plan and structure throughout the animal 
kingdom from the singes to man.” 
Prof. C. O. Whitman,98 in describing a “rare form of the blasto- 
derm of the chick, in which the primitive groove extended to the 
very margin of the blastoderm, terminating here in the marginal 
notch first observed by Pander,” justly contends that “in the origin 
of the embryo from a germ-ring by the coalescence of the two halves 
along the axial lines of the future animal, and, secondly, in the 
metaineric division which followed in the wake of the concrescence,” 
we have evidence of the annelidan origin of the vertebrates since 
concrescence of the germ bands is a well established fact for both 
chaetopods and leeches. 
The tracing of apparently widely divergent structures to a com- 
mon origin has engaged the attention of many of our investigators. 
Not only has a large amount of evidence been offered to show a 
common origin of widely separated structures, but memoirs of a E. S. MORSE, 
31 
speculative and theoretical character have given us a possible clew 
to the avenues we may follow in further establishing a proof of the 
unity of origin of forms and parts. 
Dr. Francis Dercum 99 gives an interesting review of the struct- 
ure of the sensory organs and urges that the evidence goes to 
prove the common genesis of these organs. 
Prof. A. Hyatt100 has presented an interesting study of the 
larval history of the origin of tissue. He attempts to show a phy- 
letic connection between the Protozoa and Metazoa, and also to 
show that the tissue cells of the latter are similar to asexual 
larvae “and are related by their modes of development to the Pro- 
tozoa just as larval forms among the Metazoa themselves are re- 
lated to the ancestral adults of the different groups to which they 
belong.” Dr. John A. Ryder 101 has studied the law of nuclear 
displacement and its significance in embryology. In a discussion 
of this subject he says “The mode of evolution of the yelk is of 
great interest, and doubtless occurred through the working of nat- 
ural selection. It is evidently adaptive in character, and the ne- 
cessity for its presence as an appendage of the egg grew out of the 
exigencies of the struggle for existence.” 
Mr. H. W. Conn,loa in a paper entitled “Evolution of the Deca- 
pod Zoae” gives a number of striking and suggestive facts explain- 
ing the reason of the multiform and diverse character of the larvae 
of decapod crustaceans. He shows in what way natural selection 
has affected the young. What has seemed an almost insoluble 
mystery, as to why the early stages of closely allied crustaceans 
should be so often diverse in their varied armature of long spines, 
their powers of rapid flight, etc., are explained on the ground of 
natural selection. In another memoir by the same author,103 
on the significance of the “Larval skin of Decapods,” a very com- 
plete discussion of the views of authors are given. At the outset 
he shows that the crustaceans are a particularly favorable group 
for the study of phylogeny and then suggests the character of the 
ancestral form of the Crustacea from the significance of the larval 
envelope. The author infers from his studies that “ all Decapods 
are to be referred back to a form similar to the Protozoae (Zoae) in 
which the segments of the thorax and probably of the abdomen 
were present, and whose antennae were locomotive organs.” 
Not the slightest justice can be done this admirable discussion in 
the brief reference here made, but the perusal of it will certainly 32 
impress one with the profound change which lias taken place in the 
method of treating a subject of this nature compared to the treat- 
ment it might have received in pre-Durwinian days. Indeed the 
features discussed in this paper would not have attracted a mo- 
ment’s attention from the older naturalists. 
Since Darwin published his provisional theory of Pangenesis it 
has provoked speculative efforts on the part of some of our natu- 
ralists to devise other hypotheses which might answer some of the 
objections urged against Darwin’s hypothesis. Space will permit 
only a mention of a few of these papers. Prof. W. K. Brooks104 
presented, in brief abstract at the Buffalo meeting eleven years 
ago, a provisional theory of Pangenesis. These views more elab- 
orated are now published in book form under the title of “The Laws 
of Heredity.” An illustrious reviewer says it is the most important 
contribution on the speculative side of Darwinism that has ever ap- 
peared in this country. He has also aptty termed studies of this 
nature molecular biology. Dr. Louis Elsberg at the same meet- 
ing also read a paper on the plastidule hypothesis. 
Dr. John A. Ryder 105 has made an interesting contribution en- 
titled “The Gemmule versus the Plastidule as the Ultimate Phys- 
ical Unit of Living Matter.” In this paper he discusses Darwin’s 
provisional theory of Pangenesis and shows it to be untenable 
from Galton’s experiments. 
Hueckel’s provisional hypothesis of the Perigenesis of the Plas- 
tidule is clearly stated, and he closes by saying that the logical 
consequences of the acceptance of Haeckel’s theory and with it the 
theory of dynamical differentiation—liecause the latter is no longer 
an hypothesis—forever relegate teleological doctrines to the cate- 
gory of extinct ideas. 
The widespread public interest in Darwinism arose from the 
fact that every theory and every fact advanced in proof of the 
derivative origin of species applied with equal force to the origin 
of man as one of the species. The public interest has been contin- 
ually excited, by the consistent energy with which the church, 
Catholic and Protestant alike, has inveighed agninst the dangerous 
teachings of Darwin. Judging by centuries of experience, as at- 
tested by unimpeachable historical records, it is safe enough for 
an intelligent man, even if he knows nothing about the facts, to 
accept promptly as truth any generalization of science which the 
church declares to be false, and conversely to repudiate with equal 
address nr 33 
E. S. MORSE 
promptness, as false, any interpretation of the behavior of the uni- 
verse which the church adjudges to be true. In proof of this 
sweeping statement one has only to read the imposing collec- 
tion of facts brought together by Dr. White, the distinguished 
ex-president of Cornell University, which are embodied in his work 
entitled “The Warfare of Science,” as well as two additional chap- 
ters on the same subject which have lately appeared in the Popu- 
lar Science Monthly. One then realizes the lamentable but 
startling truth that, without a single exception, every theory or 
hypothesis, every discover}7 or generalization of science has been 
bitterly opposed by the church, and particularly by the Catholic 
church which resists, and, as Huxley says, “ must, as a matter of 
life and death, resist the progress of science and modern civiliza- 
tion.” 
Only the briefest reference can here be made to a few of the 
numerous contributions on the subject of man’s relationship to 
the animals below him. The rapidly accumulating proofs of the 
close relation existing between man and the Quadrumana make 
interesting every fact, however trivial, in regard to the structure 
and habits of the higher apes. 
Dr. Arthur E. Brown 106 has made some interesting experiments 
with the monkeys at the zoological gardens in Philadelphia. He found 
that the monkeys showed great fear, as wrell as curiosity, when a 
snake was placed in their cage, though they were not affected by 
other animals, such as an alligator and turtle. On the other hand, 
mammals belonging to other orders showed no fear or curiosity at 
a snake. These experiments, repeated in various ways, lead him 
to only one logical conclusion “that the fear of the serpent became 
instinctive in some far distant progenitor of man, by reason of his 
long exposure to danger and death in a horrible form, from the 
bite, and that it has been handed down through the diverging lines 
of descent which find their expression to-day in Homo and Pith- 
ecus.” 
The same author,107 in an exceedingly interesting description 
of the higher apes, says “ Mr. A. R. Wallace once called attention 
to the similarity in color existing between the orang and chimpan- 
zee and the human natives of their respective countries. It would, 
indeed, seem as if but half the truth had been told, and that the 
comparison might be carried also into the region of mind ; the 
quick, vivacious chimpanzee partaking of the mercurial disposi- 34 
tion of negro races, while the apathetic slow orang would pass for 
a disciple of the sullen fatalism of the Malay.” 
Doctor Brown108 has also given a description of the grief mani- 
fested by a chimpanzee on the death of its mate. His grief was 
shown by tearing his hair or snatching at the short hair on his 
head. The yell of rage was followed by a cry the keeper had 
never heard before, a sound which might be represented by Imli- 
ah-ah-ah-ah uttered somewhat under the breath, and with a plaint- 
ive sound like a moan. 
Mr. W. F. Homaday 109 read at the Saratoga meeting of this 
Association nn exceedingly interesting paper on the “ Habits of the 
Orang ” as observed by him in its native forests. He says “ Each 
individual of the Borneo orangs differs from his fellows and has 
as many facial peculiarities belonging to himself alone as can be 
found in the individuals of any unmixed race of human beings.” 
After recounting the many traits of the orang, heretofore regarded 
as peculiar to man, he says, “ let any one who is prejudiced against 
Darwinian views, go to the forests of Borneo. Let him there 
watch from day to day this strangely human form in all its vari- 
ous phases of existence. Let him see it climb, walk, build its 
nest, eat and drink and fight like human * roughs.’ Let him see 
the female suckle her young and carry it astride her hip precisely 
as do the Coolie women of Hindostan. Let him witness their 
human-like emotions of affection, satisfaction, pain and childish 
rage— let him see all this and then be may feel how much more 
potent has been the lesson than all he has read in pages of abstract 
ratiocination.” 
Prof. W. S. Barnard several years ago, in a study of the myol- 
ogy of man and apes, showed that the scansorius muscle which 
Trail studied in the higher apes and which he sup|>osed had no 
homologue in man was really homologous with the Gluteus mini- 
mus in man. Dr. Henry C. Chapman,110 in a study of the struct- 
ure of the orang outang, has confirmed the truth of Barnatd’s 
discovery. Doctor Chapman is led to infer that the ancestral form 
of man was intermediate in character, as compared with living 
anthropoids or lower monkeys, agreeing with them in some re- 
spects and differing from them in others. 
The osteological affinities which man has with the Lemuroi- 
dae, as insisted upon by Mivart, are also recognized by Cope."1 
In a general paper on the “ Origin of Man and Other Vertebrates 
ADhKKSS RY E. S. MORSE 
35 
he says “ An especial point of interest in the phytogeny of man 
has been brought to light in our North American beds. There are 
some tilings in the structure of man and his nearest relatives, the 
chimpanzee, orang, etc., that lead us to suspect that they had 
rather come from some extinct type of lemurs.” 
It would seem as if we must look farther back than the higher 
apes for the converging lines of man’s relations with them. The 
earliest remains of man or the apes found fossil, presenting as they 
do marked types with little tendency to approach each other, would 
in themselves suggest an earlier origin for both stocks. 
In a paper by Professor Cope 112 on “ Lemurine Reversion in 
II uman Dentition” he says, in concluding his article : “ It may be 
stated that the tritubercular superior molars of man constitute a 
reversion to the dentition of the Lemuridae of the Eocene Period 
of the family Anaptomorphidae, and second, that this reversion is 
principally seen among Esquimaux and the Slavic, French and 
American branches of the European race.” 
In another paper by the same author 113 on the “ Developmental 
Significance of Human Physiognomy,” he compares the proportions 
of the body and the facial peculiarities of man with the higher 
apes and human infants and shows that the Indo-European, on the 
whole, stands higher than the other races in the acceleration of 
those parts by which the body is maintained in an erect position, 
and in the want of prominence of the jaws and cheek bones, which 
are associated with a greater predominance of the cerebral part of 
the skull and consequently greater intellectual power. 
Dr. Harrison Allen,114 in a study of the shape of the hind limb 
as modified by the weight of the trunk, dwells on the manner of 
articulation in the gorilla of the fibula with both calcaneum and 
the astragalus, as well as the fact that the astragalus in that genus 
possessed a broad deflected fibula facet and says “ This peculiar 
projection is rudimental in the astragalus of civilized man, but 
was found highly developed in an astragalus from an Indian grave 
found at Cooper’s point, New Jersey.” 
In my Buffalo address, I alluded to a paper by Prof. N. S. Shaler 
on the intense selective action which must have taken place in the 
shape and character of the pelvis in man on his assumption of the 
erect posture—the caudal vertebrae turning inward, the lower portion 
of the pelvis drawing together to hold the viscera, which had before 
rested on the elastic abdominal walls, the attending difficulty of 36 
ADDRRSS BT 
parturition, etc. Dr. S. V. Clevenger 1,5 has since called attention 
to other inconveniences resulting from man’s escape from his 
quadrumanous ancestors. In a paper entitled “ Disadvantages of 
the Upright Position,” he dwells particularly on the valves in the 
veins to assist the return of blood to the heart which considered 
from the usual teleological point of view seems right enough ; 
but why, he asks, should man have valves in the intercostal veins? 
lie shows that in n recumbent position these valves are an actual 
detriment to the flow of blood : “ An apparent anomaly exists iti 
the absence of valves from parts where they arc most needed, such 
as the vente cava;, spinal, iliac, hiemorrhoidnl and portal. The azy- 
gos veins have imperfect valves. Place man upon ‘all fours ’ and 
the law governing the presence and absence of valves is at once 
apparent, applicable, so far as I have been nble to ascertain, to all 
quadrupedal and quadrumanous animals. Dorsad veins are vnlved ; 
cephalad, ventrad and caudad veins have no valves.” By means of 
two simple diagrams he shows clearly the distribution of valved 
and unvalved veins as they exist in mammals, and why in man the 
same arrangement becomes detrimental. lie dwells on the numljcr 
of lives that are sacrificed every year by the absence of valves in 
the luemorrhoidal veins. He also mentions other disadvantages in 
the upright attitude, as seen in the |>osilion of the femornl artery, 
even with man’s ability to protect it. Its exposed condition is a 
dangerous element. Inguinal hernia of rare occurrence in mam- 
mals occurs very often in man ; at least twenty per cent !>eing af- 
fected. Strangulated hernia also causes many deaths. Prolnpsus 
uteri and other troubles and diseases are referred to by Doctor 
Clevenger as due to the upright |>osition. In other words the penal- 
ties of original sin are in fact the penalties resulting from man’s 
assumption of the erect posture. 
In another paj>er by the same author,11* on the “Origin and 
Descent of the Human Brain,” he gives an interesting sketch of 
the phylogenesis of the spinal cord to its ultimate culmination in 
the development of the brain of man. He says that the most 
general interest centres in the large mass of cells and nerve fibres 
called the cerebrum. “ In the Ornitborhynchus, it is smooth 
and simple in form, but the beaver also has an nnconvoluted brain 
which shows at once the folly of attaching [myehological impor- 
tance to the number and intricacy of folds in animal brains. With 
phrenology, which finds bihativeness in the mastoid process of the E. S. MORSE 
37 
temporal bone and amativeness in the occipital ridge, the convo- 
lutional controversies must die out, as has the so-called science 
of palmistry, which reads one’s fate and fortune in the skin-folds 
of the hand.” 
Prof. Alexander Graham Bell 117 has presented a memoir to the 
National Academy on the “ Formation of a Deaf Variety of the 
Human Race” in which he shows by tables a series of generations 
of certain families in which the progenitors being deaf mutes this 
peculiarity becomes perpetuated in many of the descendants. 
Recognizing fully the laws of heredity, natural selection, etc., he 
shows that the establishment of deaf-mute schools, in which a vis- 
ual language is taught which the pupils alone understand tends to 
bring them into close association with each other; and, that natu- 
rally with this seclusion, acquaintance ripens into friendship and 
love and that statistics show that there is now in process of being 
built up a deaf variety of man. 
Dr. W. K. Brooks,118 animated by the cogency of Professor 
Bell’s reasoning, is led to prepare an article entitled “ Can Man be 
Modified by Selection ? ” In this paper he discusses the startling 
proposition of Professor Bell and recognizes the convincing proof 
which he furnishes to show that the law of selection does place 
within our reach a powerful influence for the improvement of our 
race. The striking character of the tables of facts presented by 
Professor Bell and the significant suggestions of Doctor Brooks 
lead one to consider how far the influence of selection has had to 
do with the character of great communities, as to their intelli- 
gence or ignorance. When we see nations of the same great race 
stock, one showing a high percentage of illiterates, a high death 
rate, degradation and ignorance, while just across the borders an- 
other nation, apparently no better off so far as physical environ- 
ments are concerned, with percentage of illiterates and death rate 
low, intelligent and cleanly, we are led to inquire if here a strict sci- 
entific scrutiny with careful historical investigation will not reveal 
the cause of these conditions. Can it be proved beyond question 
that the illiteracy and degradation of Italy and Spain up to within 
recent years, at least, are the result of centuries of church oppres- 
sion and the Inquisition, destroying at once, or driving out of the 
land all independent thinkers and at the same time forcing her 
priests to lead celibate lives and inducing others of cultivated and 
gentle minds to lead cloister lives? Is it also a fact, as Alphonse 38 
ADDRESS BT 
de Candolle asserts, that by far the greater number of distin- 
guished scientists have come from Protestant pnstors? He gives 
a significant list of eminent men whose fathers were Protestant 
pastors saying that had the}* been priests of another religion lead- 
ing celibate lives these men would not have Itcen born. 
It is considered an intrusion into matters which do not concern 
science when such inquiries are made, but the scientist has very 
deeply at heart the intellectual and moral wclfure of the commun- 
ity. If the cause of degradation and ignorance, of poverty, of con- 
tagious disease, or of any of the miseries which make a nation 
wretched can be pointed out by scientific methods, then it is the 
stern duty of science to step in and at least show the reasons, even 
if the remedy is not at once forthcoming. The men who would be 
reformers and agitators and who by their earnestness and devotion 
get the attention of multitudes are unfit for their work if they 
show their ignorance, as most of them do, of the doctrines of nat- 
ural selection and derivation. 
Dr. C. S. Minot119 read a paper before the Cincinnati meeting 
of this Association suggesting a rather startling proposition as to 
whether man is the highest animal, which led Dr. W. N. Lock- 
ington 190 to reply in a very able article entitled “ Man’s Place in 
Nature.” 
The great problem of food supply has led to legislative enact- 
ments for the purposes of regulating the trapping and netting of 
game and fish. State and government grants have been made for 
fish commissions; but unless the public are clearly educated in 
the rudiments of zoological science and the principles of natural 
selection, appropriations will come tardily and in limited amounts. 
Dr. W. K. H rooks,191 in his rejjort to the State of Maryland as 
one of the oyster commissioners, after showing the ulmurd way 
in which the problem of oyster protection has been dealt with and 
strenuously urging the necessity of oyster culture, calls attention to 
the fact that 44 civilized races have long recognized the fact that the 
true remedy is not to limit the demand, but rather to increase the 
supply of food, by rearing domestic sheep and cattle and |K>ultry 
in place of wild deer and buffaloes and turkeys, and by cultivat- 
ing the ground instead of searching fer the natural fruits and seeds 
of the forests and swamps.” 
Mr. Krnest Ingersoll,199 author of the “ Iic|>ort on the Oyster 
Industry,” 10th U. 8. Census, has, in an address before the Geo- 39 
graphical Society of New York, a striking sketch of the effect of 
the white man on the wild animals of North America, showing 
that had the Indians remained in possession, little, if any, change 
would have taken place. The Indian, like the predaceous animals, 
hunts only for food and shows even in this habit, a wholesome self- 
restraint, never killing wantonl}7. He called attention to the sur- 
vival of a number of small birds about the dwellings of man as the 
result of favorable conditions, such as a constant supply of food, etc. 
He shows that the contact of man in the main has been disastrous. 
His remarks on the oyster are timely ; he shows its extermination 
along the coast by man’s agency. “Hardly more than a century 
has elapsed since men believed that the oyster beds of New York 
were inexhaustible and that a small measure of legal protection, 
feebly maintained, was quite enough to sustain them against any 
chance of decay. So they thought in Massachusetts, where the 
oysters have not only disappeared but have been forgotten. So 
they think now in Maryland and Virginia, where their fond expec- 
tations are destined to equal downfall.” 
Prof. William H. Brewer,123 in a paper on the “ Evolution of the 
American Trotting-Horse,” shows that the trotter is an American 
product and that it is still in process of eA7olution. He gives a 
column of figures to show the speed that has been attained in this 
new form of motion, from a speed of three minutes in 1818 down 
to two, ten and a quarter minutes in 1881. The materials for a 
curve is offered to mathematicians, and Prof. Francis E. Nipher,124 
in a mathematical article on the subject, shows that a definite time 
of ninety-one seconds will ultimately be attained by the American 
trotter. Mr. W. H. Pickering,125 however, urges some objections 
to the deductions of Professor Nipher. 
In drawing to a close this very imperfect summary of what 
American zoologists have accomplished for evolution many other 
distinguished contributors might have been mentioned. The work 
of eminent physiologists and paleontologists has hardly been con- 
sidered, nor has the long array of botanical facts for Darwin as 
revealed in the fascinating study of the relations which exist 
between flowering plants and insects, contrivances for cross fertil- 
ization, means of plant dispersion, etc., and the distinguished bot- 
anists connected with this work, received attention here. Indeed 
the proper limits for an address of this nature have been far ex- 
ceeded. 
E. S. MORSE. 40 
ADDUK88 BY 
Sulllce it to say that all these students have worked from the 
standpoint of Derivative doctrines. A still greater triumph to 
Darwinism are the evidences of gradual conversion still going on 
among a few isolated workers who still remain stubborn, yet yield- 
ing to the pressure of these views by admitting features that ten 
years ago they repudiated. 
There are two points to l>e emphasized here in closing, and one 
is that American biological science stands as a unit for evolution, 
and the other is, the establishment of a great generalization which 
shows that when intelligence became a factor in animals it was 
seized upon to the relative exclusion of other characteristics. This 
generalization offers an unassailable argument to-day for a wider, 
broader and deeper education for the masses. The untold misery 
and suffering of the working classes as witnessed in their struggles 
of the last two years would have been avoided hud the rudiments 
of social science—even a knowledge of the value und significance of 
simple statistics, been appreciated by them. 
The startling pa|>er of Dr. Seaman 186 on the “ Social Waste of a 
great City” shows the blundering, criminal way in which munic- 
ipalities are controlled by coteries ignorant alike of Science and 
the beneficent mission she stands waiting to enter u|>on. 
[Within ten years a number of general works on Evolution have ap- 
peared, the moat Important of which have been the “Law of Heredity" by 
Dr. W. K. Brooks, to which allusion has already been made, and the “Ori- 
gin of the Fittest” by I’rof. E. D. Cope, In which are brought together the 
various papers, memoirs, addresses, etc., of the author which have ap- 
peared from time to time In scientific Journals and magazines. Nearly all 
the addresses read, within the past ten years, before this association by 
the presiding officers who were zoologists have been Imbued with Dar- 
winism aud Derivation. The titles of the general articles which have 
appeared on evolution would fill a large catalogue. 
The general addresses on the subject are legion. Indeed, as the revered 
botanist Asa Gray has well remarked, “ Dante literature aud .Shakespeare 
literature have been the growth of centuries but Darwinism filled teeming 
catalogues during the life-time of the author.” 
While no reference can be made to these various publications, allusions 
must be made to the Darwiu Memorial meeting of the Biological Society 
of Washington as containing a most appreciative r£*um£of the labors of 
the great naturalist. A perusal of the addresses on that occasion brings 
to mind very vividly the comprehensive scope of the work of this great 
wan. The Introductory by Prof. Theodore Gill Is a strong sketch of the E. S. MORSE 
41 
wonderful revolution wrought in the methods and eonvictions of natural- 
ists by the doctrines of Darwin. Of great interest and value also are the 
succeeding addresses read at that meeting, which were a “Biographical 
Sketch” by Dr. William H. Dali, “The Philosophic Bearings of Darwin- 
ism” by Major John W. Powell, “Darwin’s Coral Island Studies” by Mr. 
Richard Rathbun, “Darwin’s Investigations on the Relation of Plants and 
Insects” by Prof. Charles V. Riley, “Darwin as a Botanist” by Mr. Lester 
F. Ward, “Darwin on Emotional Expression” by Mr. Frank Baker, clos- 
ing with “A Darwinian Bibliography” by Mr. Frederick W. True. 
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26. “ “ “ xvii, p. 196. 
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ADDItK.88 HT 
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66. “ “ ** xvi, p. 1. 
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69. 
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75. Ain. Nat., V<»|. xv. p. 812. 
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78. Am. Nat., Vol. xxi, p. 546. 
79. Science, Vol. I, p. 303. 
80. Ain. Nat., XTn, p. 407. 
81. Wheeler** U. 8. Geog. Sur., Vol. iv, pi. n, p. 182. E. S. MORSE. 
43 
82. Proc. A. A. A. S., Vol. xxxi, p. 477. 
83. Proc. A. A. A. S., Vol xxxm, p. 471. 
84. Proc. Phila. Acad. Nat. Sci., 1881, p. 468. 
85. Science, Vol. ix, p. 114. 
86. Am. Jour. Sci. and Arts, Vol. 27, p. 161. 
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89. Am. Nat., Vol. xix, p. 1172. 
90. Am. Jour. Sci. and Arts, Vol. 22, p. 338. 
91. Proc. B. S. N. H., Vol. xxi, p. 301. 
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96a. Trans. Conn. Acad. Arts and Sci., Vol. in, p. 281. 
97. “ “ “ “ “ “ “ xiy, p. 96. 
98. Proc. B. S. N. H., Vol. xxil, p. 178. 
99. Am. Nat., Vol. xn, p. 579. 
100. Proc. B. S. N. H., Vol. xxm, p. 45. 
101. Science, Vol. i, p. 273. 
102. “ “ in, p. 513. 
103. Studies from Biol. Lab., Johns Hopkins Univ., Vol. in, No. i. 
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105. Am. Nat., Vol. xm, p. 12. 
106. “ “ “ xii, p. 225. 
107. “ “ “ xvii, p. 119. 
108. “ “ “ xiii, p. 173. 
109. “ “ “ xiii, p. 712. 
110. Proc. Phila. Acad. Nat. Sci., 1880, p. 163. 
111. Pop. Sci. Mon., Vol. xxvn, p. 609. 
112. Am. Nat., Vol. xx, p. 941. 
113. “ “ “ xvii, p. 618. 
114. Proc. Phila. Acad. Nat. Sci., 1885, p. 383. 
115. Am. Nat., Vol. xviii, p. 1. 
116. “ “ “ xv, p. 513. 
117. Mem. Nat. Acad. Sci., Vol. n, 4th mem. 
118. Pop. Sci. Mon., Vol. xxvii, p. 15. 
119. Proc. A. A. A. S., Vol. xxx, p. 240. 
120. Am. Nat., Vol. xvii, p. 1003. 
121. Kept. Oyster Com. Maryland. 1884, p. 31. 
122. Bull. Am. Geog. Soc., 1885, No. I. 
123. Am. Jour. Sci. and Arts, Vol. xxv, p. 299. 
124. St. Louis Acad. Sci., May 7, 1883; also Am. Jour. Sci. and Arts, 
Vol. 26, p. 20. 
125. Am. Jour. Sci. and Arts, Vol. xxvi, p. 378. 
126. Science, Vol., vm, p. 283.