Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/56

50 are aspects of certain biological problems, for instance, that admit of no other than mathematical treatment; and this treatment ought to be, indeed to be thoroughly sound must be, at the hand not of a botanist or zoologist with some incidental mathematical training, but of a mathematician. The astrophysicist is really a physicist using his tools in astronomy. The biochemist is primarily a chemist applying his cunning in the domain of living things. The paleontologist, whatever else he may be, must be a zoologist, and so on. So important is this matter that at the risk of seeming verbosity, I venture to illustrate it yet further.

Take anthropology, and to make the case more concrete, consider the question of the native peoples of western North America, for in a remote, amateurish sort of way I have an interest in some phases of this question. The broadest, fullest knowledge possible about these tribes is, of course, the ultimate aim. The investigations must then comprehend their somatology, their language, their psychology, their culture and their archeology, which runs into paleontology and so into geology. Now who but one soaked in linguistics is really competent to handle the language end of the problem? But where, think you, is the man thus prepared who is equally soaked in comparative anatomy and thus made equally fit for the somatological end of the problem? He simply does not exist, nor can he.

Or again, take the field of marine biology, about which I speak with some of the confidence that experience is capable of begetting. And first let the distinction be sharply made, as it surely must be, between marine biology and general biology advanced by researches on marine organisms. The former has for its aim, in the large, the getting of as comprehensive an understanding as possible of the life of the sea. It, of course, presents itself under a great variety of secondary, tertiary, etc., questions; but the sum total of the phenomena of marine plants and animals will never be lost sight of as its real aim. The latter makes use of animals and plants that live in the sea in general biological researches. That these organisms happen to be marine is an incident merely. The investigator turns away from his sea organisms without hesitation when others, from whatever source, come to hand that suit his purpose better. Further, the user of marine organisms in such general investigations is quite indifferent to every thing concerning them that does not bear upon his particular problem. He puts aside the marine animal after it has served his purpose without having even noticed, perhaps, the major part of its traits and qualities, and questions about it.

Now marine biology as here comprehended must have the correlated efforts of highly trained investigators in several widely separated fields of science. In the first place, there must be, of course, for the