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 Volume IX May-une 1907 Number ORNITHOLOGY FOR A STUDENT OF EVOLUTIONARY- PROBLEMS x By WM. E. RITTER OT long ago I made a hurried visit to the graveyard wherein lie the remains of learned societies that I have seeu come to life and go to death during my acquaintauce with affairs of the intellect in California. Never mind how many tomb-stones I found there uor what iuscriptions they bore. Our interest is in the liviug rather than in the dead. Reference is made to these graves merely for the sake of asking wherefore in the midst of such wide-spread death and decay, any of the creations referred to should possess real powers of endurance. I am speaking of associations whose ends are mutual helpfulness among persons having some common intellectual interest, but which have to accomplish these ends without legal status and money endowment. What ones of all such have escaped the common lot? Everybody acquainted with the Cooper Ornithological Club knows one of them. There is one other, and only one as noteworthy as this. That is the Philosophical Union, the focus of which is here in Berkeley. It would be interestiug to know why these two organizations so asunder in character and purpose should have struck such deep root into the intellectual soil of our com- munity. One meaning of the fact is that iu this, as in any community where many minds are working vigorously and without trammel, physical nature in her most objective, most sensuous aspects is bound to have the homage due her at one end of the intellectual gamut, while the most recondite problems of existence will enforce their claims to attention at the other. This is as it should be. It means intellee~ tual health and symmetry. The whole universe belongs to the human mind, and the mind's determination to make good its exalted claims is irresistible. Proof of the validity of these claims is furnished by the circumstance that into whatsoever part of the universe the mind penetrates, it is there able to establish law and order; or if another form of expression be preferred, it finds there law and order of a sort fitted to its own powers and modes of working. x Read at Northern Division Cooper Club, March 9, t9o7.