AMERICAN ZOOLOGISTS AND EVOLUTION. 805 



a practical application of these sciences was capable of showing an 

 immediate material return. 



Agassiz, in his appeal to the State for appropriations for the great 

 museum at Cambridge, insisted that there were higher dividends than 

 those of money to be looked for in endowments for zoological muse- 

 ums, and these were intellectual dividends. "While the force of this 

 appeal will always remain true, the transcendent importance of the 

 naturalist's studies from the standpoint of Darwin is widely recognized. 

 Man now becomes an object of rigid scientific scrutiny from the new 

 position which has shed such a flood of light upon the animals below 

 him. His habits, behavior, the physical influences of his environment 

 and their effects upon him, transmission of peculiarities through the 

 laws of heredity all these factors are directly implicated in the burn- 

 ing questions and problems which agitate him to-day. Questions of 

 labor, temperance, prison reform, distribution of charities, religious 

 agitations, are questions immediately concerning the mammal man, 

 and are now to be seriously studied from the solid standpoint of ob- 

 servation and experiment and not from the emotional and often incon- 

 gruous attitude of the Church. To a naturalist it may seem well-nigh 

 profitless to discuss the question of evolution since the battle has been 

 won, and if there be any discussion it is as to the relative merits and 

 force of the various factors involved. The public, however, are greatly 

 interested in the matter, as may be seen by a renewal of the fight in 

 the English reviews, and the agitation is still kept up by well-meaning 

 though ignorant advisers, who insist that Science has not yet accepted 

 the doctrine ; and great Church organizations meet to condemn and ex- 

 pel their teachers of science from certain schools of learning because 

 their teachings are imbued with the heresy. 



Dr. Asa Gray,* in his discriminating biographical memoir of Dar- 

 win, says, in regard to the " Doctrine of Descent " : " It is an advance 

 from which it is evidently impossible to recede. As has been said of 

 the theory of the Conservation of Energy, so of this : ' The proof of 

 this great generalization, like that of all other generalizations, lies 

 mainly in the fact that the evidence in its favor is continually aug- 

 menting, while that against it is continually diminishing, as the progress 

 of science reveals to us more and more the working of the universe.' " 

 Let us examine, then, the evidences, trivial as well as important, that 

 have been recorded by American zoologists within the past ten years 

 in support of the derivative theory. 



Without further apology for the very imperfect character of this 

 survey, let me at once begin by calling attention first to the testi- 

 mony regarding the variation in habits and evidences of reasoning 

 power in animals. The establishment of individual variation in 

 mental powers, change in habits, etc., lies at the foundation of Dar- 

 winism as furnishing material for selective action. There is no 



* " Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences," vol. rvii, p. 449. 



