HUNTING FOR MISSING LINKS IN SPITSBERGEN

Professor of Biology and Director of the Course in Evolution

A distinguished biologist once said to me that he was perfectly satisfied to study life in any place big enough to sit oh. I think I know what he meant. He meant that he was a willing slave to his work and was tied to his chair and his microscope by the invisible thread of his problem.

But all problems are not alike. Sometimes they take you by the ear and lead you from one corner of the world to another. When they take hold in that way, there is no choice. You go where they lead.

Not long ago I learned, in the round- about way such information usually comes to us, that certain fossil animals, called Ostracoderms, had been found in the northwest corner of Spitsbergen, and that they were in a very wonderful state of preservation. As they held the key to my problem and would not come to me, I simply had to leave my grapefruit and go to them..

For many years my particular problem has been the Origin of Vertebrates, and that problem, for a century or more, has been the outstanding problem m the evolution of animal life.

To the biologist, the real "missing link," or the biggest gap in animal evolution, is not between man and the apes, but between the vertebrates and invertebrates. For all vertebrates, such as man, monkeys, birds, toads, and fishes, are built on precisely the same architectural plan. That is, all of them have the same kind of organs arranged in the body in the same way. Such animals differ from one another only in the relative development of their organs and the extent to which they work together for the common purposes of life.

The evolution of every important organ can be traced, without noteworthy break, from man down to the lowest fishes. But there, apparently, the ancestral trail abruptly ends, and far, far, beyond, on much earlier and lower levels, is a maze of other trails, which lead in devious ways to common origins in unicellular life.

At the bottom of the long series of fishes, amphibia, reptiles and mammals, stand the Ostracoderms. These little known animals, no doubt, were the ancestors of all the vertebrates. They have been extinct for hundreds of millions of years, and some of them are among the oldest fossils of any kind distinctly preserved, although their remains are usually in a very fragmentary condition.

Where did they come from? What kind of invertebrates gave rise to the vertebrates? When, and how, and why, did that great event in organic evolution take place? There is the greatest differ ence of opinion among biologists on these questions, for the whole problem is exceedingly complicated and has many side issues which are major problems in themselves. Indeed, owing to some humiliating freak of psychology, this subject more often has been obscured by prejudice and personal accusation than illuminated by information and discussion. It will do the biologists no harm to remember that the familiar characteristics of "fundkmentalism" are not wholly confined to theologians. Many biologists regard the problem as wholly academic, or insoluble, largely because they assume that the geologic and embryonic records have been destroyed, or are too blurred to be intelligible. I have not been of that opinion.

The origin of the vertebrates is certainly not an empty academic problem. It is of very great practical and philosophic importance. In the first place, its solution will open up many new fields of medical research, especially in the study of ductless glands, for the thyroid, pituitary, and pineal glands, which are among the oldest and most mysterious organs of man, have their origin and their initial functions, not in the vertebrates, but in their invertebrate ancestors. We can not understand those organs, as well as many others, till we find out what kind of animals those ancestors were. In the second place, it will provide the biologists with a definite foundation for the science of vertebrate anatomy, embryology, and physiology, where now there is none. And finally it will give us, for the first time in the history of biology, a reasonably complete picture of the ways and means of upbuilding animal life from Protozoa to man that should be of the greatest moral and ethical significance to all of us.

I have worked on various aspects of this problem for nearly forty years, and am firmly convinced that, in the main, I have found the right solution.

A. few figures, made in accordance: with our best knowledge and belief, will help us to visualize the main points at issue. The first figure represents the genealogical tree of the animal kingdom as it has grown up in the five great geologic eras, or in something like the last 1600- million years. It indicates when the great classes of animal life arose, when they flourished, declined, or died out, and their genetic relations to one another.

"Position," in the heraldry of animal life, is determined not merely by age or "ancestry," but by (1) the degree of bodily organization and the relative size of the brain, or nervous system; (2) the provisions of all kinds made for the welfare of the young; and (3) adaptability to environmental conditions, those of a temporary nature as well as those that are more permanent. Animals that have made little progress in these respects are represented by nearly horizontal branches on a fore-shortened time scale. Degenerate or defective types are represented by drooping branches. The numbers indicate the known number of species.

The Ostracoderms, of which there were many kinds, stand about two-thirds of the way up the great highway of animal evolution. They are regarded as the "connecting link" between the vertebrates and the Giant Sea Scorpion. They have some of the more obvious characteristics of the fishes, such as the fins and tail. On the other hand, they resemble the Giant Sea Scorpions in the general structure of the head, the paired jaws, (working sidewise instead of forward and backward as in all true vertebrates) the oar-like appendages, the eyes, and the minute structure of the shell-like armor.

The Giant Sea Scorpions are well worthy of distinction as the remote ancestors of man. They are of immeasurable antiquity, and long before the vertebrates made their first appearance they were the undisputed rulers of the seas. Even in those days the Sea Scorpions had a "good head," in the colloquial as well as the technical meaning of the term. Probably they were the first animals of considerable size (some of them were about six feet long) with vital powers sufficiently coordinated for an effective response to environments, for swift pursuit and certain capture. And they, like all the vertebrates, were built on an architectural plan (the "triaxial system"), that was preeminently logical, and capable of endless readjustments to meet the demands of the higher life which was to spring from them.

A man's head is the most complex thing in the world; but some heads, though more complex, are less perplexed than others. It is made up of from 16 to 20 "joints" and subdivided into five special regions, each one with a distinctive set of functions. Originally each joint was something like those in the tail of a lobster, or scorpion. A joint of that kind, if it is complete, or unmodified, may contain all the different kinds of organs essential to a rudimentary life. In some worm-like creatures, the whole animal is made up of many such joints, all of them, like a row of tenement houses, essentially alike in functions and furniture.

The most obvious trend of organic evolution is to coordinate and unify such multiple functions to mutual advantage, or to make many separate tenements into one communal mansion. In doing that the chief receptive and inspective functions are necessarily located in "front, where they can be most useful, the heating, cooking, and pumping functions are centralized in the main body of the house, and the excretory and reproductive functions relegated to outhouses in the rear.

This head-building business is clearly in evidence, and already far advanced, in the Sea Scorpions and their relatives; but nothing of that kind has been found in any other invertebrate. In these animals, about sixteen "joints," are more or less intimately combined to form a compound head, and it consists of five distinct regions, each region having approximately the same number of joints, the same relative location, and the same functional peculiarities, as corresponding regions in the vertebrate head. That cannot be a coincidence. It is the surest evidence of genetic relationship.

The Giant Sea Scorpions built better than they knew. They died out, in giving birth to higher life, many million years ago. But a few near relatives, such as the little land scorpions and the horse-shoe "crab," still survive, practically unchanged. These "living fossils are our master keys to the "dead life of those early builders that now lives in us.

But there were cripples in those days, as well as giants, and the Sea Scorpions had their "poor relatives" in the alms house, as we have ours. Many lives, defective, then went wrong. There were crooked, maimed, and over-burdened bodies, headless and sightless ones, and dwarfs, all impotent to act, but in their way prolific. In seclusion, and as parasites on Nature's bounty, they too could live and multiply, but not create. Yet some of these poor cripples have been chosen—by experts—as the progenitors of man. And the expert, like everyone else, once "set" is not easily moved. For he "makes up" his mind as the maid makes up the bed—puts blankets on it and a pillow for his head. Then, let the wind blow as it may, no draft of unwelcome facts can disturb his slumber.

Those are some of the complications of our problem.

Spitsbergen, now the attractive pole of my desire, was far, far away, a misty, ice-covered archipelago some twenty-five thousand square miles in area, and only six hundred miles from the north pole. Probably it was first discovered by the Norsemen in the 12th century, named Svalbard and forgotten; and finally rediscovered by Berents in 1596, in his search for a north east passage to the Indies.

No aborigines were there and no forests. Only a few willows and beeches, creeping dwarfs two or three inches high, grew on its more favored terraces, and there too, for a little while, a few stout-hearted flowers bloomed in brilliant clustering colors. But animal life, in great abundance, flourished on its icefree borderlands and in the surrounding waters.

It was a no-mans-land, an unpillaged treasure house of nature, the home of the whale, walrus, seal, reindeer, polar bear, and artic fox, and a nursery for myriads of sea-fowl. Great stores of drift wood, ancient forest wrecks, drawn on ocean currents from eastern Siberian rivers and from the western tropics, littered its rocky shores, almost imperishable in that cold and germless atmosphere. But within a century or two after Berents' discovery, its countless herds of whale-bone whale, to amuse the white man and keep him warm, went out the way of the buffalo. Now the walrus and reindeer are almost gone, and the polar bear, the artic fox, and the drift wood, are fast going out the same way.

For the last three centuries Spitsbergen has been a flesh-hunters paradise, like every earthly paradise, a lonely land of wild adventures, of incredible hardships, and inevitably tragedy. Now it is the paradise of a new generation of hunters, a mine for the prospector, a library for the scientist, and a workshop for the diggers of coal. With all that, it is a convenient "jumping off place" for the north pole, and for that matter, a perfectly good jumping off place for any sort of unattainable desire.

How to get to Spitsbergen was another problem. There was practically no way of getting there except by coal boats running at uncertain intervals from Harstadt and Tromso, on the northern extremity of Norway. And I soon found out. that the coal companies, except on special approval, do not carry passengers on their boats, nor allow strangers to camp on their property. It is a precaution amply justified by long experience with the claim jumpers and adventurers of a lawless terra nullius. Besides, to reach my objective in the northwest corner of Spitsbergen, far beyond their domains, and to work there to any advantage, would require a specially equipped expedition costing something like ten thousand dollars.

In the spring of 1925, when I finally made up my mind to go there, it was too late to raise money for an expedition of that sort. Indeed every factor likely to insure its success was lacking, or so uncertain that no encouragement for that immediate project was received, nor could it reasonably be expected.

There was nothing to do but start out by myself and keep on going as far as possible. A companion; under the circumstances, was an undesirable responsibility. For the most I could hope for, if I could get there, was to locate the deposits, collect a few sample specimens, and study the local conditions. Then perhaps I might be able to work out the ways and means for a larger expedition.

A day. or two before leaving New York, I received assurance of a grant of $250 from the American-Scandinavian Foundation, and was given letters of introduction that were of great assistance. My wife and I sailed for Norway on the Stavangerford, June 12th, with many distinguished Norwegians aboard, including a number of delegates, both men and women, returning to Norway from the centennial anniversary of the first shipload of Norwegians to land in America. Some of these delegates I had met at a dinner given in their honor the day before our departure by the Trustees of the Foundation. All of them were very kind to us on the way over and were very helpful to both of us on many different occasions during our stay in Norway.

In Oslo, through the American Minister and our Norwegian friends, I was introduced to Director Bey of the Great Norwegian Coal Company, who arranged for my passage to Advent Bay, Spitsbergen, on one of their boats sailing from Harstadt in about two weeks, and for my stay at their headquarters in Advent Bay, till I could complete my arrangements to go further north.

I also had the good fortune to meet Prof. Hoel, the leader of many government expeditions to Spitsbergen, chiefly for topographic surveys. He could spare me but little time for a conference, as he was leaving in three hours, with a large party of scientists, for Spitsbergen. But in that little time things moved rapidly and decisively. He called up a young law student, named Husberg, who had previously been with him on his survey work. Within an hour I had engaged Husberg, for the season as my personal assistant and interpreter. In another hour he was ready for Spitsbergen, Hoel having kindly offered to take him on his overcrowded boat to Advent Bay, where he was to await my arrival. In another hour, he was gone, and my little expedition, at least that much of it, was under way.

For equipment, I had a small rifle with ammunition, my hammers and chisels, and a sleeping bag; also a "pup" tent and cooking outfit for two, but no provisions. Our advisors agreed that the best we could do would be to take the rather forlorn chance of finding the right kind of a boat, a captain, and the necessary provisions, in Spitsbergen.

About that time I began to hear terrible tales of Spitsbergen, some of them already familiar. An authentic government report described a terrific wind storm that lifted a heavy whale boat clean out of the water, carried it through the air for two or three hundred yards and smashed it to pieces against the inshore rocks. Such winds, though local, may last for three or four days, driving everyone to shelter. And it told about the much dreaded pack ice, never far off, which is liable at any time to drive in shore and crush the boats or pen them up for the winter in harbors from which there is no overland escape.

These accounts, needless to say, I kept to myself. The dangers are real, no doubt, but I felt that any captain I was likely to engage would know what was reasonably safe, and would be as careful of me as of his own boat and his own welfare.

But I could not find out anything definite about the location of my fossils. Nobody seemed to know anything about them, except that they had been found near Red Bay, a hundred and fifty miles north of my landing place, and that, I already knew. These northern bays, owing to ice and bad weather, are not safe after the first of September, so it was some consolation when Hoel promised to pick me up at Red Bay, in case I was not out of there by the 28th of August. How he could get in if I could not get out was not apparent.

For a while, it looked as though we could not get as far as Harstadt, as all the space for that port had been booked many weeks in advance. However, after some manoeuvering, we managed to squeeze onto a tramp tourist boat from Newcastle, and after a delightful voyage up the Norwegian coast reached Harstadt with several days to spare. Those days were to be multiplied, indefinitely, it was feared, when our Spitsbergen steamer ran aground outside the harbor. We spent the intervening time in memorable excursions to the beautiful fjords and outlying islands near Harstadt and Tromso.

Finally word came that our boat was safely off the rocks and passably repaired. Mrs. Patten left for southern Norway to await my return, and then after more delays that seemed interminable, we were actually started on the last lap of our long journey to Spitsbergen. Then the time went quickly enough. The captain, a modern Norseman in his early thirties, spoke four languages and was deeply read in many subjects. And two distinguished Scotchmen, Mr. Mathieson and Dr. Brown, experienced explorers of Spitsbergen, one of whom I knew by reputation, were fellow passengers.

Those first four days in Artie waters were not notably eventful; but to me they were tense with the suppressed excitement of new surroundings. We talked much, and wondered about it all.

Our first glimpse of Spitsbergen was a fringe of saw-toothed mountains, intensely white, on a dark horizon. It grew into a splendid panorama of snowcovered peaks, black cliffs, and tumbling, blue-green glacier heads, as for sixty miles or so we sailed up the great Icefjord, stippled with icebergs, to Advent Bay. There, in a sheltered recess, was a desolate looking dock, and above, in a narrow rock-strewn valley out of sight, was the coal miners village of some two or three hundred inhabitants, sometimes called Longyear City. Husberg was on the clock waiting for us, and we were very hospitably received by the superintendent of the mines, who had been notified by wireless of our coming.

I heard from him that a suitable boat, then in Bell Sound, might be available in a week or so. Pending its return, I gladly accepted an invitation from the Scottish explorers, to spend a few days with them at their camp in Gyps Valley, thirty odd miles away. That was my first experience of camping and tramping in Spitsbergen. It was wholly delightful, and withal a timely warning, for in that short time my best boots were ruined by the snow-water and sharp rocks everywhere encountered. Moreover, on our way back, after several long "faints," our motor finally died for good and all, near a dangerous reef. Fortunately there was little wind. It was forty-eight hours without sleep, nothing much to eat, and a lot of hard work at the oars, before we got back to Advent Bay. But I had learned a few things and hardened up a bit.

The expected boat and its owner, Mr. Warming, had arrived. It was a hunting sloop, thirty-five feet long, with heavy plank bottom, sails, oil motor, a cabin with a small stove and bunks for two, a tiny galley, and a forecastle. The "White Horse," as it was called, was not very white, and it did not look, or smell, like 'a horse; but it was a good carrier, and very suitable for our purposes. We soon signed a contract, covering insurance, provisions for three weeks with emergency rations for three months, oil, a captain, who by the way spoke excellent English, and a crew of one man to run the engine.

Our business was done on mutual faith, for there was no money to be had in Spitsbergen. So a confiding native took the note of a confiding stranger, payable after he was safely out of the country. But lam glad that stranger did not have to eat those emergency rations!

Just before we were ready to leave, a government steamer, which was to take four of Hoel's party to the Red Bay region, was wrecked on the reef, near which our motor "died" on our return from Gyps Valley. We took them with us as deck passengers, being only too glad to make a partial return for the many favors we had received.

We set out about noon on our first long haul, the deck piled high with luggage and two boats in tow. All that mid-summer night, with no darkness to punctuate the lagging time, a drizzling mist, with occasional rain and snow, shut out the distant scene, and a stiff head wind with heavy seas made progress slow and precarious. There was much confusion. Food or sleep was out of the question, and clearing up was hardly possible, as most of the time we had to hold on with both hands to whatever seemed immovable. Nearly all of us were seasick, and to add to our cold discomfort, the stove broke loose from its moorings, threatening immediate disaster.

It was a long miserable night, the worse in our Spitsbergen experience. But the next day it was all forgotten, for we were round the point and well up the Foreland Sound, in good weather. The sun was bright on dazzling peaks to right and left, and its penetrating rays, with amazing warmth, went through our heavy clothes as through a plate glass window. Countless guillemots and little auks were feeding all about us. They would wait till we were almost on them, and then with comical, startled looks, fly up and away on radiating, splashing trails, or dive into the transparent waters, where we could clearly see them in -frantic zigzag flight, paddling for dear life with both feet and wings, many feet below the surface.

After passing through the sound, we stopped at the Kings Bay coal mines for supplies and much needed rest for the captain and engineer, who had been on duty for more than thirty-six hours. It was from here that Amundsen made his dramatic dash for the north pole. Our distinguished passengers were well known there from previous visits, and the wireless had already announced their coming, with some enlargements on the mission of the hunter of missing links. We were received with undiluted pre- Volstead hospitality, and in spite of insufficient training and the somewhat intricate formalities, our mutual regards were respectfully offered, and accepted, with adequately respectable results. The next day, with the best wishes of our hosts, we again turned northward, away from the last outpost of hospitality. This time our course was on the open ocean, along a forty mile wall of cliffs and glacier heads, without a harbor or landing place. But the weather was favorable, with no pack ice in sight, and we made the passage without difficulty.

On the northwest corner of Spitsbergen is a group of small islands, toward which we were headed. They are famous as bird rookeries, as whaling stations of the 17th century, and as the points of departure for many fruitless attempts to reach the north pole.

We stopped at Amsterdam island to inspect the ruins of what was once a great industry. In its heyday, during the latter part of the 17th century probably several thousand people each summer assembled there, including whalers, workmen, shopkeepers, soldiers and sailors, and, it is said, women of a kind to engage their idle hours without matrimonial complications. Only traces of the old boiling vats were visible, and whale bones, mingled with the bones of those who died in slaughtering them, or in fighting one another, were strewn about in democratic communion. A century ago, at least a thousand shallow graves were counted in one of several graveyards. Most of the graves have been broken open by bears and foxes, and the bones and fragments of rude coffins scattered about on the frozen ground.

Although we saw only one human being, outside the coal mines and the members of our own party, the traveller in western Spitsbergen sees many relics of the seventeeth century whalers, the Russian hunters of the eighteenth century, and the Norwegian hunters of more recent times. They testify, not so much to former numbers, as to the accumulation of centuries, and the long preservation of these mournful records of lonely adventurers.

Beyond the Norways, our course was eastward, along the northern shores of Spitsbergen, and on Aug. 1, with the midnight sun shining brightly, we came to anchor at the head of Red Bay.

We had ample time, as we sailed up the twenty, miles of its extent, to study the desolate surroundings where we were to work for the next few days. We landed our passengers on a rocky beach, and then, overjoyed at having reached our goal, went to bed, too tired to do anything more.

Before I again was fairly awake, the young Russian of the party we had brought with us, a geologist as keenly interested in fossil fishes as I was, came aboard the White Horse, and smiling with delight laid before me a fragment of an Ostracoderm, saying in broken English that it was "a sacrificial offering of his first find." It was a moving tribute and a good omen of success. They had worked all night to set up their camp and had already begun their investigations. That is the way in Spitsbergen. There is no regular schedule. You work as long as you can, and eat, or sleep, at whatever time or place is most convenient.

For safety's sake, we were anchored more than a mile from the Grand Glacier, that stood at the head of the Bay. In that cold, clear atmosphere, its massive head, two hundred feet high, looked like a mere platform of ice a few rods away. Other dimensions were equally deceptive. But the real distances, the actual size of the loose, sharp-cornered rocks, and the heights to be overcome, were appalling.

We could see no life in that place. The visible world seemed one vast ruin, frozen into stark immobility. It seemed as dead as the primordial animals we were seeking in the rock-sealed cemeteries of the hills, and like them, a mere relic of times, immeasurably remote, when semitropical forests covered the land and the harvests of life were abundant.

Then I awoke to signs of subtle movements, suddenly aware that a new kind of life was stirring there, one with which I was not then familiar. The stream lines of the glaciers, with dark rows of debris piled high on their backs, and pannierlike pyramids of rocks on either side, were visibly eloquent of vital activity, of a tremendous pushing and ploughing and carrying power, slowly and steadily at work. And, giving tongue to their labor, at not infrequent intervals there was the rattle of falling rocks on neighboring slopes, and the crashing roar of calving glaciers giving birth to infant icebergs. Our little boat rocked to their fall, and we, safely out of the main current, could sometimes feel their gentle touch as they passed down the vagina of the bay, with their burdens, to the sea.

There was no death there! It was all life. But a larger, steadier life than ours; one that was creating new lands where, in their summer time, life in new garments again shall flourish. Even those poor fossils, though dead a thousand million years, through science, shall give light and life to millions yet to come.

I worked along the sides of the gullies and on the sloping piles of treacherous rocks at the foot of the higher cliffs. In these loose rocks, and in the undisturbed strata, we found many fragments of the fossils we were seeking. Some of those that we were able to bring away with us will throw new light on the anatomy of these creatures, but none of them, in the preservation of their internal structures, can compare with the best specimens in the Museum at Stockholm. After a few days we moved still farther East, to Liefde Bay, and Bock Bay where we explored other geologic formations.

On our way back, we were fog-bound, and lay at anchor for two days. Many fulmars, a small arctic albatross, crowded inquisitively about our boat, attracted by the refuse of the seals we had shot. We amused ourselves by fishing for them with chunks of blubber tied to a string. They fought persistently for the slippery bait, even after many surprising and disappointing experiences.

The season was getting late, and we were worried about the heavy fog and its probable cause, the pack ice. One day. at that time, we came across a Norwegian hunter who had been "out" a year and a half, the last five months entirely alone, and with no likelihood of escape before winter set in. He had been living mainly on eider ducks eggs, collected the previous spring. We took him with us, apparently not much the, worse for his experience, except his boots.

A day or two later, we were again held up by fog, and the captain and the hunter went ashore to look for reindeer. When they came back, about one o'clock in the morning, they acted very strangely. It was some time, after we were again under way, before it dawned upon me that my Captain, "Oh my Captain!'" was drunk. It was a difficult situation. I had no idea where he "got it", or what his reaction might be. We at once came to anchor, as it would have been suicidal to go on. Then I talked to him in the way 1 sometimes talk to a freshman, and much to my surprise he reacted in the way they usually do. He was painfully penitent, and after a while he told me that they had come across an air plane (probably previously located by the hunter) that had been abandoned by an Oxford expedition two years before. In it they had found what he called a bottle of Scotch "wine", which they immediately divided between them. The Captain either got more than his share, or his reaction was better than the hunters, for he certainly was the drunker of the two. It was finally agreed that we should go to bed and stay there, till we, or rather they, were sober. And we went—in that direction.

I hardly was asleep before I was wakened by a tremendous racket overhead. Two or three times the boom was raised and allowed to fall with a bang that shook the whole boat, and then several rifle shots rang out in quick succession. It did not sound like penitent freshmen. I had to go up on deck to investigate, though I must say I did not like that kind of investigation. Besides the night was cold and windy and my pajamas were not much protection against the wind or anything else. But they served, for it turned out that the captain, still befuddled, had mistaken a curiously shaped iceberg for a friendly boat, and was trying to attract its attention. He was very much surprised to-learn that he had attracted my attention also. After that, we did go to sleep, and there was no further trouble.

Our hunt was over. We had travelled more than four hundred miles on our faithful White Horse, had reached our objective and accomplished all that reasonably could be expected.

Many Spitsbergen Ostracoderms are now in the State Museum at Stockholm, under investigation by Prof. Stensio. On my return from Spitsbergen, Prof. Stensio, with rare generosity, placed all his priceless material at my disposal. That scientific idealism, so common in precept, so rare in practice, is all the more note- worthy as the fossils in question are "miracles" of anatomical preservation, without a parallel in the history of science. Blood vessels, cranial nerves, and other delicate structures are shown with a distinctness more suggestive of artificial preparations than fossils millions of years old.

The new facts, so unexpectedly revealed, bridge the structural gap between the Ostracoderms and the Giant Sea Scorpions so completely that it is now safe to say the "missing link" in animal evolution has at last been found.

At the December meeting of the biologists in New Haven, I had the pleasure, for which there are good precedents, of shying a rather mean teleological brickbat at the heads of my distinguished colleagues. Perhaps you are not acquainted with that variety of brickbat. Mine; was shaped something like this. I said to them: "When I consider the marvellous way these particular animals are preserved, I sometimes think that God prepared them with His own hands in His private Spitsbergen laboratory and kept them in cold storage these millions of years, so that today, with these missiles, I might let some light and life into you hard-boiled fundamentalists."

We need some of those specimens in our American museums.

Canadian Ostracoderm (Bothriolepis) from a model by the author

A Giant Sea Scorpion showing the five groups of "joints" that enter into the make up of the "head"

The Captain and the Hunter of Missing Links at Red Bay

Mount Temple and Camp in Gyps Valley

The White Horse in Red Bay

A lonely Adventurer, the rescued Norwegian Hunter

Copyright, 1926, by William Patten