Page:Condor9(3).djvu/6

68 THE CONDOR VoL. IX and a concomitant impetus to their study resulted. In the absence of clearly defined conceptions of what either a variety or a species is, or of workable criteria for testing them, the multiplication of intergrading series ceased after a while, to be profitable to the student of evolution. For one occupied primarily with the making of a consistent, usable classification, such series are, of course, always important. But to him who seeks the meaning of these series, the mere exhibition of them does not yield much satisfaction; and the multiplication of instances after conviction is reached that the world is full of them, is not very enlightening. So it came about, not from the behests of science, but from that particular frailty of human nature which is impatient of efforts the ?alue of which as measured by its own standards is not obvious, that "hair-splitting" in systematic botany and zoology fell into dis- repute. Now, however, that the discoveries of Mendel and De Vries have put into our minds conceptions about J:z'?zds of organisms that we did not have before, and into our hands instruments for testing the character and validity of these, we see that it is exactly to the refined observations and descriptions of what exists in nature in the way of kinds, that those engaged on the problems of origin are com- pelled to turn for material to work with. Right, in science as in all else, may serenely await her day of vindication. Species splitters, among whom American ornithologists have long sat on the front benches, have a right to be gratified that the very hands which a few brief years ago were pointed at them in disapprobation of their labors, are now stretched out to take from them the products of those same labors. You young bird men who a short while ago were likely to receive smiles of cynicism rather than of encouragement from biologists in high places for your enthusiasm in making out the subspecies of our song sparrows, our juncos, our kinglets, our horned larks and the rest, need no longer lament lest your work should have no reward but the pleasure in its performance. For a long time to come whatever of this sort you do will be rated higher on the scientific stock exchange than formerly it was. But I am not going to let you off without an appendix to this reward of merit which I gladly give you. What further are ornithologists going to do in the premises? That they will keep on gathering information of the kind they have already garnered in such richness is to be hoped. Will they do more? Will they take a hand in searching after the significance of the facts, now that keener prob- ing instruments have been devised? Two circumstances encourage the expectation that they will. In the first place the large amount of young blood there always is in ornithology, augurs well. Proverbially it is on the young men that new methods and new ideas have to rely mostly for getting themselves tried out. In the second place it would seem that the insistence ornithology has long placed on precision should be a guarantee of its readiness to try other methods that are pre-eminently of this character. Exaclness in observation, in description, in measurements, in terminology, has been its special glory. The critical habits engendered by these exactions should, it would seem, be rich and eager soil for still other exact methods to grow in. The ornithological positiveness as to what, on the morphological side, constitutes the species and subspecies, and the rigorous prac- tices in testing these, leave little to be desired. This very positiveness and rigor, going thus far, ought to be intolerant of restraint on going farther. To the ornithologist who loves truth no less ardently than he does birds, the utter vague- ness as to what his morphologically delimited groups would look like were they to be physiologically tested, cannot but forever fill the background of his scientific consciousness with foreboding. Cloddish and inadequate to the student of birds, above all naturalists, ought to be a classification that rests almost exclusively on