sary in order to do the thorough scientific work demanded by
modern scientific requirements. This is true even of exploration done
along the courses of unknown rivers; it is more true of the
exploration, which must in South America become increasingly
necessary, done across country, away from the rivers.

The scientific work proper of these early explorers must be of a
somewhat preliminary nature; in other words the most difficult and
therefore ordinarily the most important pieces of first-hand exploration
are precisely those where the scientific work of the accompanying
cartographer, geologist, botanist, and zoologist must be furthest
removed from finality. The zoologist who works to most advantage in
the wilderness must take his time, and therefore he must normally
follow in the footsteps of, and not accompany, the first explorers.
The man who wishes to do the best scientific work in the wilderness
must not try to combine incompatible types of work nor to cover too
much ground in too short a time.

There is no better example of the kind of zoologist who does first-
class field-work in the wilderness than John D. Haseman, who spent
from 1907 to 1910 in painstaking and thorough scientific investigation
over a large extent of South American territory hitherto only
partially known or quite unexplored. Haseman's primary object was to
study the characteristics and distribution of South American fishes,
but as a matter of fact he studied at first hand many other more or
less kindred subjects, as may be seen in his remarks on the Indians
and in his excellent pamphlet on "Some Factors of Geographical
Distribution in South America."

Haseman made his long journey with a very slender equipment, his
extraordinarily successful field-work being due to his bodily health
and vigor and his resourcefulness, self-reliance, and resolution. His
writings are rendered valuable by his accuracy and common sense. The
need of the former of these two attributes will be appreciated by
whoever has studied the really scandalous fictions which have been
published as genuine by some modern "explorers" and adventurers in
South America; and the need of the latter by whoever has studied
some of the wild theories propounded in the name of science concerning
the history of life on the South American continent. There is,
however, one serious criticism to be made on Haseman: the extreme
obscurity of his style--an obscurity mixed with occasional bits of