USA > New York > Tompkins County > Landmarks of Tompkins County, New York : including a history of Cornell University > Part 62
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The exhibition cases should contain only specimens which can instruct or interest the visitor. Not only should the facts be displayed, but fundamental principles should be illustrated. There should not only be special series of embryos, brains, hearts, etc., but such preparations should be associated, to a certain extent, with the animals to which they belong. Preparations illustrating important facts should retain so much of the entire animal as may facilitate recognition and association ; when this is inconvenient, the preparation may be accompanied by a figure of the animal. When the relative rank of several forms is well determined, the lower or more generalized should be placed below or at the left, and the higher or more specialized above or at the right.
Of natural series, the most conspicuous and complete should be the vertebrate branch synopsis: this should embrace, within a space easily covered by the eye, one stuffed example or model of a species representing each vertebrate class, together with four preparations exhibiting the vertebrate type of structure ; viz., a transection of the whole body; a hemisection of the whole body; a complete vertebral segment ; a hemisected skeleton showing the variation in size of the neural and haemal cavities. So far as possible, these preparations should be made from members of different orders of the class, and be accompanied by outline diagrams and explanations.
Each class, but first and especially the mammalian, should have its own special synoptic series, embracing one or more entire examples of each order, and prepara- tions illustrating the characters of the class.
Among special series other than systematic, are analogous forms and structures which are sometimes mistaken for one another, but more readily discriminated when
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brought together. Such series are the rostrated animals, spinous forms, and those who have parachutes. Physiological series would contain the hibernating animals, those which are blind or nearly so, and such as are provided with seent-glands, tusks, and all poisonous vertebrates.
A local collection should embrace all the animals of the vieinity, and will benefit the student, both as an example for him to follow or improve upon, and as exempli- fying the laws of geographieal distribution and the influence of environment. The local eolleetion need not contain anatomieal preparations, but should exhibit both sexes, and all stages of growth of each speeies,-its mode of life, friends and foes, - so as to interest also the ehildren, farmers, fishermen, hunters, and other residents of the neighborhood.
The sums available from the annual appropriations for the increase of the Museum have been very small. Through the efforts of President White, a single grant made it possible to secure many important speci- mens from Ward's Natural Science establishment at Rochester, but much is still needed to complete the series.
With the exception of some mounted skins and skeletons, nearly all the specimens exhibited in the Museum have been prepared by mem- bers of the staff or their student assistants. Among the latter should be particularly mentioned Theobald Smith, F. L. Kilborne, B. L. Oviatt, E. H. Sargent, J. M. Wilson, Miss O. O. Strong, R. B. Hough and M. J. Roberts. Some of the preparations which they have made are not only instructive but elegant and even unique.
Donations to the Museum have been numerous and often valuable. Besides constant remembrances from former students, there should be mentioned particularly the collection of 300 mounted birds, mostly from North America, presented by the late Mr. Greene Smith, of Peterboro, in 1868, and a series of bows and weapons and implements of Anglo- Saxons, Romans and Britons, presented in 1870 by the late Professor George Rolleston, of Oxford University.
To render the educational value of the Museum as great as possible, it is intended that each specimen should be accompanied by a concise statement of the most important facts respecting it in particular and such specimens in general; and, if it is an anatomical preparation, also a figure or photograph bearing the names of the principal parts, and an enumeration of the points illustrated by it.
It is one of the canons of the department that all of the work done by the student in investigation shall be accurately described; but as verbal descriptions alone are inadequate, careful drawings are required as an essential part of the description. Since 1874 photography has been very largely, employed in the exact delineation of complex objects.
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It was early seen, however, that in order to render photography appli- cable to the reproduction of figures of the great variety of objects studied, it would be necessary to devise some means by which the specimens could rest in the position most natural and least liable to injury; sometimes in a liquid to support delicate parts and prevent their collapse. Hence a vertical camera was devised by the associate professor. In photographing with this, the object rests horizontally, and the camera points directly downward. With this camera hundreds of pictures of the most varied objects have been made; many of which have served as the basis for drawings to illustrate special investigations ; and some, of entire animals photographed in the water, have served for half tone and photogravure reproduction. Rare animals or specimens are photographed upon their receipt by the department, before dissec- tion, and frequently during various stages of dissection. Fresh fishes and other aquatic animals are photographed under water, either immedi- ately after death or while etherized. In this way the fins and other flexible parts float out in their natural condition and a most truthful picture of the animal results.
Beside the ordinary photographic cameras and objectives, the depart- ment possesses a very complete and perfect outfit for photo-micrography. Indeed it may be said that the scientific work of the department and its publication have been greatly advanced and encouraged by the above photographic facilities. 1
Among the special features which have been introduced as aids to study are the card catalogues, containing names and descriptions of the various objects preserved, a book catalogue, the slip system of notes and photographs of objects studied, which are inserted in portfolios or mounted.
Alinjection designates the method of preparing and preserving ani- mals or their parts, and especially hollow organs, by the injection of the preparation into the arteries or the carotids. The transmission of preservative liquids to the tissues by a constant pressure-apparatus connected with the vessels by which blood reached the parts during life, is really so simple, as well as effectual, that it is hard to account for its comparatively infrequent adoption. Without previous acquain- tance with what had been done by others, Dr. Wilder began, with the
1 For the figures and description of the vertical camera and its application to the reproduction of natural history figures see Science, vol. III, page 443, and the " Microscope and Microscopical Methods," fifth edition, page 146.
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co-operation of Professor S. H. Gage, on October 7, 1883, upon the body of a young chimpanzee, an alinjection of the entire body, which was prolonged for ten days, and was completely successful. In No- vember, 1885, a manatee, 150 ctm. long, was prepared in like manner; all the cats used by the general class in physiology are alinjected and packed away till wanted; still-born children are commonly so pre- served, and all anatomical material in medical dissecting rooms may be thus rendered innocuous, free from unpleasant odor and fit for pro- longed and thorough examination.
This method of preservation, for the more satisfactory display and study of hollow organs like the heart, is believed to be one of the most valuable methods introduced by the department. By its means, the heart of the sheep, used by the general class in the laboratory work or " practicums," becomes almost as easy of dissection and of compre- hension as the elaborate and costly papier maché models. This method of preparing the eyes used for class dissection has also been of the greatest service ; for the study of the cavities of the brain, its value can- not be overestimated.
Since 1880 the members of the department have united in an effort to improve the terminology of anatomy in two ways: First, as to the terms of position and direction; to employ such as relate to the organ- ism itself and are applicable to all the vertebrates, e. g., dorsal and ventral for posterior and anterior, or upper and lower. Second, to re- place the names consisting of two or more words by names of one word, e. g., corpus callosum by callosum; commissura anterior by precommissura. The objects attained by the change are brevity; ca- pacity for adjective inflection, and substantial uniformity in all lan- guages, since the Latin original can be adopted with unessential changes to modern languages.
What effect the precept and example of this department may have exerted, cannot now be estimated, but progress is making steadily along these lines irrespective of the general adoption of any special set of terms. Much of the success of the instruction has been due to the habit of consistently employing only one series of names in a given lecture, article, or book.
The head of the department is in the habit of urging his students to strive in composition for clearness, consistency, correctness, conciseness, and completeness. These he calls his five C's.
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In all the courses, gencral as well as special, in the laboratory work and in publication, weights, lengths and volumes are stated in the metric system, although the common equivalents are sometimes added.
The lectures in physiology have been illustrated by experiments mostly upon the cat and frog. But the charge of cruelty cannot be mantained against the department.
Although our subjeet is the physiology of man, yet-beeause most of the organs are out of sight and experimentation upon human beings is limited-the bulk of ac- curate physiological knowledge has been gained from animals and must be illus- trated therefrom.
All the experiments in this course are (and always have been) performed upon ani- mals just killed or completely anesthetized; the utmost pain inflicted is in killing a frog by "pithing" with a sharp knife, and this is approved as a humane method of slaughtering animals for food. The writer holds that nothing more is warranted in the way of illustrative experiment; his proposition that the two kinds of viviseetion should be verbally distinguished as sentisection aud callisection (the latter from the Latin callus, insensitive) was published in Nature at the request of the late Charles Darwin.
No lecture in the department has ever been given without specimens or models, and sometimes as many as forty different specimens are brought from the museum or laboratories to illustrate a single lecture. When practicable they remain for more leisurely examination by the class.
Each class, whether general or special, is invited to regard the lec- ture room as its "study " for the term, and there is unrestricted ac- cess to the specimens, books and diagrams.
The museum now contains more well prepared human cerebrums than any other institution in this country. The objects of the collec- tion are set forth in the following paragraph from an article by Profes- sor Wilder:
THE NEED OF PARTICULAR BRAINS .- From the physiologieal and psychological standpoint it is elearly desirable to study the eerebrums of persons whose mental or physical powers were marked and well known. The present condition of things is illogieal and unprofitable. We scrutinize and record the characters and attainments of public men, clergymen and friends, whose brains are unobtainable. We study the brains of paupers, insane and criminals, whose characters are unknown, or, per- haps, not worth knowing.
Another aspect of the matter is the need of a fissural standard, based upon the eareful comparison of large numbers of average, intelligent, edueated, and moral in- dividuals, excluding the eminent as well as the immoral, the ignorant and the insane.
It must be borne in mind that the fissural pattern of the average, intelligent, edu- cated, and moral human being is undetermined.
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When the university opened and for several years afterward, all of the instruction was given by the head of the department. After a lecture to a large class of freshmen, he gave special instruction in the laboratory, thus passing from the simplest facts in anatomy and physiology to a discussion of the profoundest problems in transcendental anatomy. As there were many things to be done, like arranging diagrams, and putting away specimens, etc., and students with limited means were anxious to do something to aid in their support, there arose the custom of having student assistants. The number of students employed to render assistance of various kinds in the anatomical department has been, from first to last, quite large, and many have been enabled to com- plete their university course by the money thus earned. But while this compensation was important, the inspiration gained by the students from the intimate association into which they were brought with the head and other teachers of the department, was of greater value. This association was at once pleasant and stimulating. No student assistant was ever asked or expected to render any service that the teacher him- self was afraid or ashamed to undertake, consequently a dignity was given to the work of the department, often disagreeable in itself, and the assistants only needed to know what was desired in order to accomplish it. The intimate knowledge and manipulative skill gaincd by this co-operation were regarded by more than one of those assistants as an ample recompense, even if no money had been received. Among those who thus rendered help in the anatomical department, one is now a full professor, one an associate-professor, and two, instructors in the university; one, at the time of his death, was a distinguished professor and orthopedic surgeon; and one holds an important position under the government and is one of the highest authorities in bacteriology and pathology in America; one is director of a government experiment station ; one has a responsible position in the United States Geological Survey ; one as agent of the State Board of Health is endeavoring to stamp tuberculosis out of the dairy herds of New York; others are physicians and teachers in various parts of the country. They all look back to the experience and inspiration gained in their assistant days as among the most powerful factors of their lives.
Early in the year 1893-4, a series of weekly conferences was begin, in which Professor Gage also participated, at which recent observations or conclusions of the speakers or other neurologists were presented and discussed.
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The actual work of the department has always been in advance of the facilities offered. If the only room was a poorly lighted basement or the triangular space under the rising lecture seats, the most advanced work was always in progress, such as gave the students the real and living knowledge that would enable them to do their part in life honorably and to be in the front rank. When apparatus or books were not furnished by the university, the teachers supplied the need at their own expense.
The methods of work, and the subjects for special study in biology have changed greatly since the opening of the university, and an honorable part has been taken by this department in bringing about these changes. As stated above, onc of the features of the instruction has been a combination of laboratory practice and lectures for all students doing special work in the department; from the beginning the general courses in physiology and zoology have been abundantly illus- trated by lecture room experiments, and the exhibition of specimens as well as by 'special demonstrations; but so fully was the head of the department convinced of the necessity of personal contact of the student with specimens, that he conceived the plan, and took the bold step of making practical. work a constituent part of the general lecture courses, so that, even with classes numbering nearly 200, a third of the time is given to the "practicums." This began in 1880-81 in zoology, and in 1886-82 in physiology. When this was publicly announced at a meeting of the American Society of Naturalists in 1883, it seemed like . a hazardous innovation, but time and experience have shown the wisdom of the step. and also that the large majority of general students appre. ciate real knowledge and are willing to undergo the slight inconvenience of attaining it. For the general classes, the material to be studied- cats, sheep-hearts, brains and eyes, etc.,-are preserved in alcohol and prepared so that the minimum of dissection is required of the student. That minimum, however, is considerable, and its accomplishment in the time available is only possible by the aid of printed directions, and of assistants, mostly advanced students, who stand ready to explain difficult points.
Whenever it is deemed desirable to introduce new subjects into the curriculum, the head of the department, with indefatigable zeal and energy took the work upon his own already overburdened shoulders or encouraged some of his assistants to undertake it. Thus the special lecture and laboratory courses in anatomical methods, microscopy, em-
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bryology, general histology and the special histology of the nervous system have arisen. The equipment of those courses was at first very inadequate, but earnestness and enthusiasm, while they could not take the place of proper appliances, still made the courses eminently suc- cessful and inspiring both to students and teachers. Every step in ad- vance so thoroughly proved its wisdom that material equipment was soon provided, until now it is so complete for the above courses that no student, graduate or undergraduate, is hampered for the want of opportunity, and his attainments are limited only by his own ability.
In the work of the department, as to both research and instruction, while accuracy of observation, description and delineation have been insisted upon, the mere accumulation, publication and communication of isolated facts has never been sought; the effort has been rather to co-ordinate and corelate the facts and to determine their bearing upon general or special questions in morphology, oteology or classification.
Several hundred graduates of this and other universities have worked in the laboratories of this department.
The head of the department has published numerous papers in scien- tific perodicals; eight articles or parts as colaborator in Foster's En- cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, Buck's Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences; also Anatomical Technology, as senior author with Professor Gage; What Young People Should Know; Health Notes for Students; Emergencies: How to Meet Them; and Physiology and Practicums. Besides the publications recorded above, Professor Wilder has written many articles on natural history subjects for Harper's Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Galaxy, Our Young Folks, The New York Tribune, etc. He has also written critical reviews of many scien- tific works for The Nation and for scientific periodicals.
The results of the scientific activity of Associate Professor Gage, B. S. (Cornell, 1877) are embodied in about fifty papers published in scien- tific journals and in the proceedings of learned societies; eight articles or parts contributed as colaborator in Foster's Encyclopedic Medical Dictionary, Buck's Reference Hand-book of the Medical Sciences, Johnson's Cyclopedia and the Wilder Quarter-Century Book; and in three books, The Anatomical Technology, as junior author with Pro- fessor Wilder, Vertebrate Histology, and The Microscope and Micro- scopical Methods. The first book has reached a third edition, the sec- ond a second and the third a fifth edition.
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The instructor in anatomy, microscopy and embryology, Dr. G. S. Hopkins, Cornell B. S., 1889 D. Sc. 1893, has published four scientific papers.
The instructor in physiology, vertebrate zoology and neurology, P. A. Fish, Cornell B. S. 1890, D. Sc. 1894, has published five scientific papers and contributed an article on histological formula to the sup- plemental volume of Buck's Reference Hand-book of the Medical Sciences.
The publications of the members of the departmental staff embody the results of original investigation in zoology, physiology and his- tology, or describe new methods devised in the laboratory. Many of these methods have found wide application elsewhere.
THE DEPARTMENT OF ENTOMOLOGY.
Although it was not till the fifteenth year of the active work of the university (the year 1882-83) that a full professorship was assigned to this department, the establishment of a department of entomology was part of the original plan of organization of the university. In the first general announcement of the university there is given a list of seventeen professors that had been elected, and the titles of nine others that were to be elected at an early date. In the latter list the title Professor of Economic Entomology and Lecturer on Insects In- jurious to Vegetation appeared.
This long period between the opening of the university and the es- tablishment of a full professorship of entomology was not, however, a period of inactivity in entomological work. A limited amount of in- struction in this subject was given each year from the first, and the starting of an entomological collection was begun. Dr. B. G. Wilder, the professor of comparative anatomy and natural history, had given considerable attention to the study of insects, and had made what was considered at that time a large collection. He was able, therefore, to give in his course on zoology a fuller treatment of insects than was usual in courses of this kind. The gift of his collection of insects con- stituted the beginning of an entomological museum. The increase of this collection by additions made by students began at once. The most important of these additions during the first two years was a collection illustrating the transformations of the larger moths, which was made by Mr. W. D. Scott, who was then a special student in zoology.
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At the beginning of the third year of the university, Mr. J. H. Com- stock, then a freshman in the course in natural history, was appointed laboratory assistant to Professor Wilder. The very first task that was assigned to the young assistant was the arrangement in systematic or- der of the collection of insects and other invertebrates that had accumil- lated during the preceding two years on the shelves of the laboratory. Very soon after this the entire charge of this part of the collection was placed in his hands by Dr. Wilder. Thus the growth of his personal interest in this part of the work of the university began, a part, the development of which has been associated with his life.
Mr. Comstock has been so intimately associated with the entomolog- ical work of the university that the following bit of personal history is not out of place in the history of the department: While preparing for college, Mr. Comstock became greatly interested in the study of in- sects, and determined that he would, if possible, devote his life to this study. The statement in the first general announcement of the univer- sity that a professor on entomology was soon to be elected, led him to come to Cornell, in order that he might study with this professor. This the opportunity to follow his chosen specialty came to him in due time in a very unexpected way. It came much earlier than would have otherwise been possible, but for the policy of the senior professor of zoology of encouraging his assistants, and stimulating their devel- opinent, by placing large responsibilities upon them.
During the fourth year of the university (1872-73) thirteen students in the courses in agriculture and natural history petitioned the faculty of the university to allow Mr. Comstock to give a course of lectures on insects injurious to vegetation. This petition, having the approval of Professor Wilder, was granted, and a course of lectures extending through the spring term of that year was delivered. This was the first course devoted entirely to entomology that was given in this uni- versity.
At the close of this year an arrangement was made by which Mr. Comstock spent the summer in study with Doctor Hagen at the M11- seum of Comparative Zoology of Harvard College. This short period of study had an important influence in the development of the depart- ment of entomology, which was soon afterward established at Cornell. Not only did Doctor Hagen give daily lectures to his sing'e student, but the great entomological collections of that museum were thrown open to him for unrestricted use. In this way he was able to gain a
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