[170]. E. Rutherford, Phil. Mag., 21, 669, 1911.
[171]. N. Bohr, Phil. Mag., 26, 1, 1913 et seq.
XII
A CENTURY OF ZOOLOGY IN AMERICA
By WESLEY K. COE
This article is intended as a brief survey of the development of zoology in America, and no attempt is made to give a general history of the science. There are numerous accounts in several languages of zoological history in general, among them being W. A. Locy’s “Biology and its Makers.” Brief outlines of the history of zoology may be found in many zoological and biological text-books.
For the history of American zoology the reader is referred to Packard’s report on “A Century’s Progress in American Zoology,” published in the American Naturalist, (10, 591, 1876), to Packard’s “History of Zoology,” published in volume 1 of the Standard Natural History (pp. lxii to lxxii, 1885); to G. B. Goode’s “Beginnings of Natural History in America,”[[172]] and “Beginnings of American Science,”[[173]] and to H. S. Pratt’s Manual of the Common Invertebrate Animals (pp. 1–9), 1916. In Binney’s “Terrestrial Air-breathing Mollusks of the United States” (1851) is a chapter on the rise of scientific zoology in the United States which well describes the zoological conditions in the early part of the century, while numerous monographs and papers give the history of the investigations on the various groups of animals or on special fields of study.
Brief biographical sketches of the most distinguished of our older Naturalists—Wilson, Audubon, Agassiz, Wyman, Gray, Dana, Baird, Marsh, Cope, Goode and Brooks are given in “Leading American Men of Science,” edited by David Starr Jordan, 1910. More extensive biographies have been published separately, and the activities of a number of the more prominent American zoologists have been recorded in the Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences.
The developmental history of zoology in America falls naturally into four fairly well marked periods, namely:—1, Period of descriptive natural history, previous to 1847, embracing the early studies on the classification and habits of animals, characteristic of the zoological work previous to the arrival of Louis Agassiz in America. 2, Period of morphology and embryology, 1847–1870, during which the influence of Agassiz directed the zoological studies toward problems concerning the relationships of animals as indicated by their structure and developmental history. 3, Period of evolution, 1870–1890, when the principle of natural selection received general recognition and the zoological studies were largely devoted to the applications of the theory to all groups of animals. 4, Period of experimental biology, since 1890, during which time have occurred the remarkable advances in our knowledge of the nature of organisms through the application of experimental methods in the various branches of the modern science of biology.
American Zoology in 1818.
At the beginning of the century which this volume commemorates, the accumulated biological knowledge of the world consisted mainly of what is to-day called descriptive natural history. The zoological treatises of the time were devoted to the names, distinguishing characters and habits of the species of animals and plants known to the naturalists of Europe either as native species or as the results of explorations in other parts of the world. This required little more than a superficial knowledge of their general anatomical structures.