Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 32.djvu/521

Rh nor has the long array of botanical facts for Darwin as revealed in the fascinating study of the relations which exist between flowering plants and insects, contrivances for cross-fertilization, means of plant-dispersion, etc., and the distinguished botanists connected with this work, received attention here. Indeed, the proper limits for an address of this nature have been far exceeded.

Suffice it to say that all these students have worked from the standpoint of derivative doctrines. A still greater triumph to Darwinism are the evidences of gradual conversion still going on among a few isolated workers who still remain stubborn, yet yielding to the pressure of these views by admitting features that ten years ago they repudiated.

There are two points to be emphasized here in closing: and one is, that American biological science stands as a unit for evolution; and the other is, the establishment of a great generalization, which shows that when intelligence became a factor in animals, it was seized upon to the relative exclusion of other characteristics. This generalization offers an unassailable argument to-day for a wider, broader, and deeper education for the masses. The untold misery and suffering of the working-classes, as witnessed in their struggles of the last two years, would have been avoided had the rudiments of social science—even a knowledge of the value and significance of simple statistics—been appreciated by them.

The startling paper of Dr. Seaman on the "Social Waste of a Great City" shows the blundering, criminal way in which municipalities are controlled by coteries ignorant alike of Science and the beneficent mission she stands waiting to enter upon.

{Within ten years a number of general works on evolution have appeared, the most important of which have been the "Law of Heredity" by Dr. W. K. Brooks, to which allusion has already been made; and the "Origin of the Fittest," by Professor E. D. Cope, in which are brought together the various papers, memoirs, addresses, etc., of the author which have appeared from time to time in scientific journals and magazines. Nearly all the addresses read, within the past ten years, before this Association by the presiding officers who were zoölogists have been imbued with Darwinism and deriviationderivation [sic]. The titles of the general articles which have appeared on evolution would fill a large catalogue.

The general addresses on the subject are legion. Indeed, as the revered botanist Asa Gray has well remarked, "Dante literature and Shakespeare literature have been the growth of centuries, but Darwinism filled teeming catalogues during the lifetime of the author."

While no reference can be made to these various publications, allusions must be made to the Darwin Memorial Meeting of the