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Psyche 5:77-78, 1888.

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July-August iSS8.J PSYCHE. 77
THE STUDY OF SPECIES AND THE STUDY OF CELLS. BY JAMES HENRY EMERTON, BOSTON, MASS.
[Annual address of the retiring president of the Cambridge Entomological Club, 13 January 1888.1 During the last few years the study
of species has become less and less
fashionable among naturalists. New
species are still desciibed and old ones better defined. The changes which
animals pass through as they grow up
are better understood and their habits
and distribution better known and ex-
plained but all this work is carried on
in the face of the opinion of a large
body of our most active naturalists that it is not the most proper kind of work
for a naturalist to do and might as well be left undone. For this reason many
students have felt that they could make
no investigations of any value without
a laboratory and complicated apparatus
of the latest kind and others who have
begun valuable sysetmatic studies have
felt called upon to waste what they had
done and begin again a new kind of
study.
This state of things is of special in-
terest to entomologists. The great
number of species of insects makes it
important that there should always be
men who make it their special work to
know the species of large groups and
who are able to make use of new dis-
coveries in improving their classifica-
tion and any prejudice that prevents the best young naturalists from beginning
early the study of species and getting
the knowledge and practice it needs, is
one that entomologists above all others
should do their best to discourage.
It is hard for us to realize that twenty- five or thirty years ago most naturalists believed that species could not be ex-
plained and were for all practical pur-
poses the bottom facts of natural history. The sudden change of opinion on this
bubject has naturally led to a compara-
tive neglect of the study of species.
At the same time the improvements
of microscopes and improved methods
of dissection by which each cell in an
animal can be separately examined have
opened a new field of study which has
drawn attention away from older ones.
A student beginning his studies nat-
urally follows that line which is most
popular or most novel at the time. He
sees the latest books filled with discov- eries in that direction, his teachers are helping to make those discoveries and
he sees in doing the same thing the best prospect of success in his profession.
I would not undervalue in any way
the microscopic anatomical work now
so popular with students, but only the
prejudice which leads them to believe
that it is something different from and
superior to the study and classification of whole animals.
The study of species has for its ob-
ject to improve their classification, that is to measure their resemblances and
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78 PS2Tfm. [ July-August 1888.
differences and in this way try to ex-
plain why they differ from each other
and why some kinds exist instead of
others that might have existed.
The study of microscopic anatomy
attempts the same thing with smaller
objects. It compares cells together and
classifies them into layers and tissues
and so tries to explain the cause of their differences and why they combine to-
gether some into one organ and some
into another.
In the study of species there is use
for all the facts that can be found. It
is true our classifications of most
animals is based on a very superficial
knowledge of them but this is because
the number of animals is so great that
there has not
been time to know more.
There is 110 prospect of everything- being known about any one animal and our
classifications and theories must be
made to suit the facts as they are and
then improved ;is knowledge increases.
It has often been urged against the
study of species that is largely a study of names, and students have turned to
histology or embryology hoping to
avoid this and accoinplisl~ more with
the same labor. This may have been
possible once but any einbryological
or histological book of the present time has as large a part devoted to the
a ions
meanings of words and interpret t'
of the descriptions of other writers on
the same subject as any book on classi-
fication, nor is there any reason to
believe that the proportion of space
thus devoted to synonymy will decrease-
The classification of species is largely based on specimens which are kept in
museums more or less public and it is
often possible for persons interested to compare them with what has been
written about them and the importance
of preserving such type specimens is
,
generally recognized.
The type specimens of microscopic
studies are generally kept by individual students and are small and easily de-
stroyed so that the facilities for com-
parison are small.
Thus the mistakes of systematic natu-
ral history are more easily seen and the difference between good and bad work
understood by a large number of
persons while the mistakes of micro-
scopic observations are hard to find and so supposed to be rare.
The students of the present day can
therefore go on describing new cells
with the same freedom with which
those of the past generation described
species leaving to those that come after them to correct and explain what they
have written. With increase in the
number of students this advantage is
passing away and the l~istologist will
soon have to spend as much labor in
identifying what he finds as the student of species.
When the attractions of a new study
are gone we shall see that, except in
the size of the object studied these two lines of work differ but little and one is as likely to gather valuable facts and
new theories as the other and thai in
either field the value of the work
depends only on the care and skill with
which it is done.




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