A vast number of books on fish, birds, mammals, game, and other aspects of the natural history of wild life (including many government reports) lie unused, or little used, in innumerable private libraries. These might well be concentrated for the purpose of this station. The scientific publications of the station are intended to cover every phase of the forest wild life problem, and important manuscripts are already on hand. Investigations at the Roosevelt Wild Life Station The variety of investigations which may be undertaken appropriately at such a station, is numerous indeed, including the entire gamut of activities of forest wild life. Practical consideration, however, will probably limit the work of the station to a few, relatively, of the more important and urgent lines. As examples of these the following may be given: Ecology and Life Histories.-The ecology of wild life, or the relation of these creatures to their complete environment, must always remain a fundamental problem in dealing with wild animals. There is urgent need of a great increase in our knowledge of the ecology and life histories of practically all wild life. This is true not only of the larger game and fur-bearing animals, but also of great numbers of birds and fish, even of the common kinds which have long been known. Reflect for a moment upon the great number of men who have devoted a vast amount of time to trout fishing, and it seems almost incredible at first thought that there never has been made an exhaustive, scientific study of a trout stream in America! It is hoped that the trout problem will be made one of the specialties of this station, as it is certainly one of the wild life problems of first importance. The whole subject of the post-hatchery care of fish is another instance of an extensive field in need of systematic study, and furthermore, progress in stocking streams, lakes and ponds must await studies of this character. The fur-bearing animals of the forest have in the past received but little special study, and their relation to game vermin is another subject demanding detailed attention. The Virginia deer and the beaver are the best known of the larger forest animals, and yet even today we have no thorough study of the influence of a "buck law" experiment, conducted as a scientific problem, and as contrasted with the usual exciting and emotional display which attends the discussion of this subject among sportsmen. In New York State the beaver question is one which will soon demand careful consideration if a sane policy toward these animals is to be maintained. Reliable information, and not general impressions and vague imaginings, is what is needed if wild life is to get a square deal from man. Physiology and Disease.-There are many problems in connection with the food habits, food, and nutrition of wild life awaiting investigation. Domestic animals have received much attention in this respect, but, as wild life belongs to the public, it has been to a corresponding degree neglected. The control of algae and other aquatic plants in relation to fish and the pollution of streams is another example of these wild life problems which only a trained physiologist or ecologist can solve. Closely related to the physiological problems are those dealing with the diseases of wild life. These are legion. The diseases of fish have, in particular, been sadly neglected, in spite of the fact that serious outbreaks frequently ocAs a rule the diseases of most kinds of wild life attract but little attention. They are, however, probably important factors in determining the abundance of many of the large game animals. In the case of fur-bearing animals there is a large field for experiments intended to study the effect of food and other influences upon the quality of fur. eur. Heredity. The study of heredity in forest wild life opens up a wide subject for experimental research. Disease-resisting strains may prove to be an important means of perpetuating wild life, not only in the case of large game animals, fur-bearing animals, and birds, but in fish and other forms as well. Under proper breeding management wild furs may be greatly improved in both quality and quantity. Wild Life Policies.-Upon a foundation of fact and inference such as can be built up only by investigations conducted as indicated under the preceding headings, we may hope to build up principles of management or policies for wild life which will fit them into the texture of modern social and economic life. When this is done in a scientific manner, forest wild life will be intelligently and WILD LIFE MEMORIAL TO THEODORE ROOSEVELT sympathetically appreciated and used by man to the best advantage. To build up these management policies is in fact the largest wild life problem, and the smaller special problems are means toward accomplishing the greater aim. The relation of wild animals to one another and to all the items of their environment is so intricate that those which appear superficially to be wholly unrelated are so entangled that the relation of each can be properly adjusted only by a comprehensive plan which provides for every one in its proper sphere. This plan for adjustment is the most difficult problem of all, which in comparison subordinates all others. It is the capstone or climax of the whole system of use of forest wild life. Relation of the New to the Old.-The preceding outline is a program for the activities of the new Roosevelt Station. This is in reality a new name for work already under way by the college for the last seven years. For the last five years this work has been conducted on a smaller scale than is contemplated for the new station, but, even with the limited means available in the past, considerable progress has been made. Thus the fish survey of Oneida Lake has made much progress in the study of the food of the fish, the capacity of the waters to pro 729 duce fish food, in the study of the worm parasites of fish (in coöperation with the United States Bureau of Fisheries), and in the life history and economic relations of the fish of this lake. Extensive reports have been printed on this work. In the Adirondacks, also, investigations have been made of the relation of the summer birds to these forests, preliminary studies have been made of fish, and studies have been started at the timber line on Mount Marcy (made in cooperation with several other scientific institutions). Nor has the southern part of the state been neglected, because in the Hudson Highlands, in the Palisades Interstate Park region, extensive studies have been made (in coöperation with the Commissioners of the Palisades Interstate Park) of the birds and fish, in relation to park campers and visitors. The problem of leech control, and the control of mosquitoes by fish (in cooperation with the United States Bureau of Fisheries), are additional examples of the character of the park problems which are under consideration, and show how these are related to public welfare. It is to the solution of these and similar problems which will arise that the Roosevelt Wild Life Forest Experiment Station is committed by legislative act. Few types of memorial would have received more hearty appreciation by Roosevelt himself than The Wild Life Forest Experiment Station which has been established recently at The New York State College of Forestry by the New York legislature. The work undertaken by the College and state plans not only service in wild life conservation, but also comprehensive study of habits and life histories, and the practical management from an economic standpoint of the fish, birds, and other game animals of New York. The laboratories for the present are in this building at the College in Syracuse. A special and in many ways unique library devoted to wild life will be collected at the College and maintained there for public use S Samuel Garman, of the Agassiz Museum OME naturalists of distinction, perhaps the most fortunate, seem always to ride on the crest of the wave of changing time and circumstance. Today they may be the pivot about which turns awakening popular interest in their chosen subject, tomorrow leaders in the faunal study of some distant clime the treasures of which are becoming available to science, or the exponents of some new point of view by which data, long accumulated, are being arranged in a clearer light. The careers of others follow a direct, unswerving path, building from small beginnings along preciation of species characters in the groups which will always be of value. How many others must have received similar aid, for he had then been an active herpetologist and ichthyologist for about thirty years! While other men gather and discuss the newest discovery, consult distant collections, or plan expeditions, day in and day out one may find Garman in his room in the base Samuel Garman, curator of fishes at the Agassiz Museum, Harvard College categories. It would be difficult to think of him as either carried forward by the trend of the times or bending it along the lines of his especial interests. It will never be possible accurately to estimate the sum of his contributions to his chosen science. The writer remembers, when a student in college, carrying to Samuel Garman many subtle problems in differentiating frogs and snakes, and how, although at that time he was doing little work in herpetology, he always with a few words and recourse to a specimen or two within easy reach, not only settled the difficulties, but imparted an ap ment of the Agassiz Museum, working with his specimens and books, independently, for the pure love of it, with infinite care. A chance allusion by Shufeldt, writ ing in the AprilMay number of Natural History, suggests that Samuel Garman's onetime acquaintances, themselves drifted into new lines, may not always realize that he is still there. His is the especial talent for being always there, where the writer wishes more frequent opportunities these days to take his problems, for the help sure to be received, the equally certain courtesy of welcome, and the inspiration. A glance at the list of Garman's published works on fishes shows scarcely any acceleration or abatement of effort since the first was issued in 1875. His conclusions have not always been accepted by other workers in systematic ichthyology, but they are invariably interesting and valuable. His most widely known work on fishes is perhaps the description and discussion of a very primitive shark, Chlamydoselachus, a number of years ago. It is fortunate that this most interesting fish fell into the hands of so careful and thorough a descriptive naturalist.-J. T. NICHOLS. Scientific Zoological Publications of the American Museum SUMMARY OF WORK ON FOSSIL MAMMALS By FRANK E. LUTZ Editor of the Bulletin of the American Museum and Associate Curator in Invertebrate Zoo'ogy 1 The paper by Messrs. W. K. Gregory and C. L. Camp is one of a series of studies which are intended to clothe the fossil bones of ancient animals with the muscles that once moved them. An earlier contribution by Dr. Gregory and Mr. Erwin S. Christman comprised a restoration of the musculature of lower Tertiary tithanotheres, which will be published in President Osborn's monograph on that extraordinary group of mammals. A second, relating to the jaw muscles of vertebrates, was prepared in the department of vertebrate palæontology of the Museum by Dr. L. A. Adams, and was published during 1918 by the New York Academy of Sciences. Two or more additional papers are now in progress. The specific objects of the studies, as stated by the senior author of the present number, are "to review the homologies of similar muscles in the different vertebrate classes; to make restorations of the musculature of the jaw, limbs, and axial skeleton of certain extinct amphibians, reptiles, and mammals; and to discover, one by one, some of the stages by which the more specialized mechanisms of the higher vertebrates were evolved." Dr. Gregory and Mr. Camp certainly have given invaluable service to anatomists by placing on record their comparative review of the musculature of the limbs in certain mammals, birds, and reptiles, including such zoologically important types as monotremes, the ostrich, crocodilians, the tuatara lizard (Sphenodon), a birdlike dinosaur, and the terrestrial, carnivorous, mammal-like, Tri assic reptile, Cynognathus, a complete reconstruction of which is presented in Part V of the paper. The tabulations, which relate to the origins, insertions, and nerve supply of the principal muscles of locomotion, are based not only upon the authors' painstaking laboratory dissections, and a study of the bones of the extinct forms, but also upon the scattered literature in this field, the entire sum of present knowledge of the subject, both original and compiled, being here conveniently brought together within about fifty pages of text and illustrations. Upon these data are based the more general discussions in the paper and the excellent two-color plates which show the probable arrangement and homologies of the muscular system of Cynognathus. As may well be inferred, the paper is of necessity minutely descriptive, and yet illuminating comparison rather than description for its own sake is ever the aim of both authors. By working from the known to the unknown, by ranging the flesh-clad limbs of modern animals side by side with bones which lost their blood and sinew, and even the real bony tissue itself, millions of years ago, Dr. Gregory and Mr. Camp have translated into interesting, even entertaining, language the mechanics of "walking" in its primitive stages, when, although complicated enough, it was far less intricate and specialized than among modern, relatively post-limbed mammals and birds. The differences of posture and movement between upright man and a sprawling reptile or a duckbilled platypus are obvious, but the diverse arrangement and proportions of muscular and skeletal elements, which are substantially the same elements in all three, and the evolutionary relations of the higher type of architecture to the others, are enlightening subjects which the authors of the present paper describe in detail. In the earliest four-legged animals, as in the fishes, movements of the paired limbs were closely correlated with undulatory movements of the entire trunk and tail, while in the highest stages of vertebrate evolution the limb movements and musculature become widely differentiated from those of the axial skeleton. With this progressive adaptation in mind, the authors trace the changes in the bones and muscles of the shoulder and hip girdles, explaining the significance of the expansion of this or that bony part, the development of this or that system of muscles, which, in the long course of evolution, raised the primitive reptile's belly off the ground, enabled the creature to support the entire weight of its hinder parts, for instance, on one hind leg, while it thrust the other forward, and led ultimately to that marvelous, almost inconceivable perfection of balance which permits the highest primate, the lord of creation, to stand and walk and run on two pinlike limbs without even realizing that he is doing anything remarkable. Space for discussing an eminently successful attempt to describe and historically interpret the structures upon which movement in the higher animals depends is not available, and this notice must close with Dr. Gregory's account of locomotion among primitive vertebrates: "In reptiles and primitive mammals the fore and hind limbs coöperate with each other in the following way: The fore and hind limbs of the same side move in opposite directions; on the other hand the right fore limb moves in the same direction with the left hind limb and vice versa. The backwardly extended fore foot is raised and moved forward immediately before the forwardly extended hind foot touches the ground. This criss-cross movement of the limbs is correlated with alternate lateral bendings and twistings of the thorax, and with corresponding turning and twisting of the girdles, in such a way that the forward and backward reach of the divergent limbs on one side is increased while the convergent limbs of the opposite are brought still nearer together. Another advantage of this arrangement is that the pull and push of the limb muscles is supplemented by the powerful spiral and spring-like action of the axial musculature, while a third advantage is that by stretching the limbs of the same side in opposite directions the forward thrusts and pulls are brought nearer to the mid-line, and thus the speed is increased. Hence, it should and does follow that the faster a reptile moves the narrower is its trackway." Studies on the Evolution of Animals Dr. W. D. Matthew, curator of vertebrate palæontology in the American Museum, published a continuation of researches on fossils from the Snake Creek beds in Western Nebraska, discovered by the Museum Expedition of 1908 and further explored in 1916. Fossils are very abundant at this locality, but mostly fragmentary, the teeth of three-toed horses being more numerous than anything else; jaws and skulls occur occasionally. There is a great variety of animals, more than sixty species. They belong to the late Miocene or early Pliocene epoch of the Age of Mammals and represent a stage in the evolution of the animals of the western plains which is still very imperfectly known. Various new species and genera of mammals are described, and more complete specimens of others. The most interesting new types described are a large bear-dog, a rodent about the size of a beaver, a peculiar soft-nosed hornless rhinoceros, and a peculiar horned animal supposed to be a ruminant but with a single median horn on the top of the cranium as in the fabled unicorn. An expedition in the summer of 1918, after this article was published, has obtained further interesting collections. American Museum expeditions in 1909-16 secured large collections of fossil mammals from the Lower Eocene formations of Wyoming and New Mexico, more than all that had previously been obtained, and with the very exact records and careful study of the geology of the strata, it has been possible to clear up the correlation and succession of faunas in a very precise fashion. Many new types have been discovered, and better specimens of others previously known from fragments. The affinities of various genera are discussed, and their bearing on the origin and evolution of the later Tertiary animals. A paper2 by Dr. W. D. Matthew and Walter Granger takes up the |