Zoology at Mount Holyoke.
By Ann Morgan.The Science of Zoology.
Zoology is the study of animals. And animals are a great assemblage of living things which can be grouped together because in the main they are alike in their ways of living, reproducing, and dying. They are set apart from plants by their ability to move from place to place and by the nervous system with which they have become peculiarly responsive to their surroundings. It is this responsiveness, this "answer back" in terms more or less our own, which to most of us constitutes the real difference between a dog and a post, a child and a geranium. And animals may be the disease-causing organisms barely visible with the best microscopes, or they may be human beings. One has as much right to be called animal as the other. Moreover, the habits and the laws of the animal world so underlie and include the life of human beings that we cannot escape from them by any physical or mental pathway. It is not we who have adopted animals, but they who have taken us as newcomers into a very old and compelling society.
The first business of an animal is to take care of itself; the second is to produce and provide for the future generation. These two facts dominate the history of animal life and lie deep in the inheritance which every human being receives from our common animal ancestry. They are not easy ideas to think through or to direct wisely. They have hundreds of branches and modifications which cannot be glibly learned or taught. They constitute the reason for the study of zoology, especially in its modern intimacy with human welfare. If this ancient history of animals with their heredity and evolution were more thoroughly studied and appreciated, the psycho-analysts and sex specialists would have less time for ingenuities and we should less often hear the crudity that zoology is devoid of poetry.
Ideals of the Department.
It is the hope of the department that it may teach zoology with some of that happy blending of strength and flexibility which is inwrought in its tradition. We shall pass through many pedagogical fashions, but the worthy once must always be based upon the need to look, to look again, and always to think, before and after. It was Doctor Clapp's habit to insist uncompromisingly upon the fact. Her "Exactly what did you see?" finally produced an ability to think one's own thoughts. It is hoped that with some of her mixture of sympathy and Socratic determination, we also may help our students to be cautious pioneers, but still pioneers as so many Mount Holyoke students have been in the past.
We have consistently demanded "fresh material" for dissection and study. It is an expensive method in money and in energy demanded of the instructor, but the results justify its costs. One long look at the first heartbeats of an embryo chick stimulate more thinking than many volumes and lectures. With the right material before the student it is often true that the only business of the teacher is to get out of the way. The freshly dissected stomach, or the lung, or the ovary, are of an exquisite beauty of which the preserved condition shows but faint trace. Whatever arguments there may be against it in ease for the instructor and economy of money, the pristine "fresh material" will continue to be most satisfying. A first-hand knowledge, by dissection and observation, of the alimentary canal and the reproductive system of animals will go a long way in helping a girl to think sanely of the great instincts of hunger and of sex. Women in the modern dry goods stores insist upon "the touch and see" method as did Thomas in times of old, and it is not probable that the laboratory method will soon be supplanted, no matter how much the hurry of our time may combat it.
Present Condition of the Work.
The present home of the zoology department is known to comparatively few of the alumnae. It occupies a part of the second floor and basement of the new "service building" which stands beside the lower lake. At the ends of this building on the second floor are the laboratories used exclusively for zoology, but the whole center of the floor is shared by the three departments of botany, physiology, and zoology. There are also four small offices and one preparation room, or as we used to say in Williston, "the kitchen". In this space, 88 by 46 feet, approximately 4,000 square feet, six teachers, and one secretary and curator work and teach. Two one-year and five half-year courses are given here, and, counting the registration in each class, 110 students come and go, and many animals come. Most of the courses, general zoology, comparative anatomy, and histology, have been gradually changed to meet new needs of the time. Two courses in embryology are given now, one dealing especially with the chick and mammals and a new course, "General Embryology", planned by Elizabeth Adams, 1914, which links up more closely with the problems of heredity and eugenics, and in the future the broader lines of evolution will probably be considered in another course.
There are students who help about the laboratories as they did in the days of "domestic work". They work on the new basis, but the informal cooperation is exactly the same. Each new group has to be trained in at the beginning of each year, but these students do their work thoroughly and loyally; they learn some zoology and a good deal of laboratory housekeeping, and the whole association is one which members of the staff greatly treasure.
Even in our temporary quarters we have tried to grow a little, to answer some of the demands of the time, but most of all to keep an open house where teachers and students may discover and think together about the substance of which they themselves are made.
Work of the Alumnae.
The future lines of work laid out for the zoology department depend largely upon the new trends in modern zoology, especially those in which women may become especially efficient. As we look over the records of students trained in biological lines who have graduated in the past fifteen years, these alumnae seem to fall into the following classes: those who are teaching their own children, those teaching biology in schools, or zoology in colleges (an unusually large proportion), teachers in children's museums (a work just beginning), research workers, technicians, and assistants in research or in university laboratories. These are the more strictly zoological professions. With the greater emphasis on economics, physiology, and psychology, others are working in medicine, many branches of social welfare, nursing, psychiatry, or as diagnosticians in hospital and state laboratories.
Many of the students have gone on with graduate work in zoology. Since 1904 at least two have been given the degree of Doctor of Philosophy for such work at the University of Chicago; two have received similar degrees at Columbia, and two others at Cornell University; six have taken the Master's degree at Columbia and Cornell. Three 1920 girls are now teaching and studying at Washington University in St. Louis. Several have occupied important teaching positions at these institutions and in colleges, among which are Agnes Scott, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Sweet Briar, Wellesley, Wheaton, and the Woman's College of Constantinople. These lists are but fragmentary, only suggestions which may nevertheless give an idea of the opportunities which have been opened and for which we must be ready to prepare our students. We should like to secure more complete data regarding those who have entered these or any related paths. Last year the Dean's office compiled a list for the department which gave data regarding zoology majors since 1910. Some of the most important zoological work, however, has been done by those who did not major in the subject, and, at best, our list includes only a few students. Our intimate zoological biographies were all lost in the fire, and Doctor Clapp is not always conveniently near to answer questions. It would be pleasant if when we move into the new building we might have fairly complete data about those who once studied in the department and in so great a degree have helped to make it. If these could be sent to us by the alumnae interested, a list might result which would be a link of cooperation and friendliness between the alumnae and the present staff and students of the department.
The Future Work of the Department.
The future plans of the department have been outlined for us by the nature of the subject and by the trend of work already indicated. Every person has to deal in some degree with the being and the coming to be of an animal organism. In order to think fully and sanely of these matters, each person should know the fundamental facts of structure, behavior, and development. This determines the nature of one group of our courses, the fundamental ones in general zoology and evolution, comparative anatomy, embryology, and heredity. Modern zoology is no unbranching road. Its paths are yearly becoming more various. To prepare students for the different professions which we have mentioned, we should pursue at least three different directions in the work opened to them: the study of disease-causing organisms, which would open the great field of "medical zoology"; a particular study of responsive behaviors and of the mechanics of the developing animals, experimental zoology; and natural history, the broad knowledge of animals in nature, ecological zoology.
At the present time medical zoology seems to offer a future of great possibility. It should be especially interesting to women because of its bearing upon human welfare and its importance in nursing and social conditions. At the University of California in Doctor C A. Kofoid's laboratory, now one of the forefronts in the study of parasitic organisms, Doctor Olive Sweazy [sic - should be Swezy] has done important work. Very recently Doctor Louise Pearce returned from a successful trip to the Belgian Congo where she was sent by the Rockefeller Institute to study sleeping-sickness. If this kind of work increases in importance as there is every likelihood that it will, it should offer a wide opportunity to women.
Modern zoology is turning away from its old emphasis on the shapes of the animal to a new consideration of how it behaves and why things happen as they do, both in the completed animal and in the embryo. Experimental zoology and embryology constitute these newer approaches. Such work is of particular help to students of physiology and psychology as well as being fundamental to a basic understanding of modern zoology.
Ecological zoology is only another term for thorough-going natural history. Few colleges in New England or in the whole country have a more ideal location than Mount Holyoke for the study of this outdoor zoology. It is one of the resources which we should cultivate and one in which we have great assets in natural facilities. In many institutions a class spends one or more hours in reaching a waterside no richer in life than our "lower lake". The prime value of natural history is cultural - the aesthetic appreciation, the training of observation and the correlation of isolated facts by studying nature, which is the picture of evolution always surrounding us. But there is a professional value in it for those who teach zoology in schools or children's museums. It is a great resource for any teacher if she knows just where to look for frogs' eggs or how to gather the rich harvest of animals which grow in pools and brooks. Candidates have failed to secure important positions because they were helpless "in the field".
Our main effort must always be for the undergraduate, but in these lines which have been suggested there are many problems which would lend themselves to such graduate work as assistants or scholars might undertake.
Needs of the Department.
The department has two needs. First we must have students who would like to learn about animals, and generous teachers with a knowledge of zoology and a continuing love for young human nature. Quite secondarily, we need a laboratory where either human beings or frogs may live happily, and apparatus and materials with which zoology may be best presented.
The New Laboratory.
The plans for the new laboratory are far from finished, but we have made a beginning; and President Woolley allows us to hope that we may welcome the girls there in the fall of 1923. There are many details of which we have not even thought, and some of the main proportions of the building are yet unsettled, but of one thing we are sure: that this laboratory must be first of all an informal home where teachers and students may study zoology and may look to each other for inspiration and intellectual hospitality.
It is hoped that the main zoological laboratories may be upon one floor. At present it seems desirable to cluster them about a large room which shall contain the teaching collection of specimens, models and pictures, which will illustrate the work in the different courses. Such a collection does not need to be enormous, but it should be significant and beautiful. It will probably be roughly divided with the grouping of the work in the department in some such way as indicated by these five headings:-
- The main types of animals.
(Shown by specimens and models)
- Anatomy. The organs, systems, tissues of the body.
Embryology. The different types of embryos. Kinds of development.
- Organisms affecting human welfare.
(a) Medical zoology; e.g. models of the malarial organism, spirochaete
of syphilis, specimens of infected meat, insects.
(b) Economic zoology; e.g. specimens of household and garden pests.
- Evolution and heredity.
Illustraions to show the laws governing inheritance.
- Ecological zoology. (Natural history)
A collection of local animals illustrating the interrelations of nature; e.g. bird group showing protective colors, seasonal, sex, youthful and adult coloration.
We lost many treasures in the Williston fire, and among the most precious were the specimens which had been prepared and given to the department by former students. Though not a Mount Holyoke graduate, I remember Doctor Dole's cat skeleton, with great affection. I suppose that it was one of my first inspirations to go on in zoology and to make something for the laboratory. We possessed a goodly number of such gifts: Bertha Martin's "bone collection", Doctor Lucy Smith Clemens's "little rat", and many a useful chick slide. Those were tools of teaching which we employed constantly, and through the generosity of the alumnae after the fire some beginning has been made in possessing such treasures again. They were a connection between alumnae and new members of the staff which I know by experience, and between alumnae and undergraduates which few realize unless they have heard oft repeated, "And did she take Baby Zoo?" But we have begun to place portraits of alumnae who have gone on with zoological work, or specimens of their work, especially that done since their graduation. Doctor Dole's (1886) portrait is there and some of the work of Edith Wallace, 1903, Mabel Hedge, 1909, and Doctor Lucy Smith Clemens, 1909. We shall be glad of other contributions or suggestions.
The main laboratories and class-rooms are again pretty definitely determined by the possible lines of our future work. They will, of course, be constructed upon the unit plan, and if we are to build for the future we must plan for more space than we can at present occupy. A series of three or four laboratories should be provided for the introductory work. There should be two laboratories for embryology, one for genetics with a breeding room close by where small animals may actually be bred and reared and the facts of heredity made more vivid. There should also be laboratories for comparative anatomy and histology, one for parasitology, and space for the collections of the field zoologists.
Between the laboratories or series of rooms there should be assistants' "workshops" and preparation rooms. In addition there must be private rooms for members of the staff, rooms for aquaria, protozoa cultures, chemical supplies, special technical uses (incubator, embedding) and small journal club and reading rooms into which the students may go to read on "Evolution" or "The Embryology of the Chick". There are many provisions to be made, quite different and quite necessary, such as the library which we shall share with the other departments, the photographic room, the animal house, and the basement storage.
It has seemed a pleasant possibility that groups of the alumnae may wish to furnish particular laboratories and thus create another link of association with these new places. Pictures bought from a portion of the 1898 gift are already upon our laboratory walls and more will be placed there soon. One of the embryological laboratories is to be furnished by the friends of Rosabel Miller, 1917, who especially loved and excelled in that course.
Many of the suggestions and plans here written are mere sketches, glimpses into years not yet known or fully considered. In the months to come, our teaching place must be planned and re-planned many times, but through all the thought and labor of its making one vision will go with us into the future, the vision clearly seen by Doctor Clapp and by the teachers and the students of the past and present. A zoological laboratory must be a happy place where teachers and students together may in fullest measure seek and find the truth about living things.