TEE COLLEGE OF TILE WEST. 35 



Canon City. In these rocks at least are found the earliest traces,' the 

 earliest by a million years perhaps, of any backboned animals. From 

 these it is a far cry indeed to the shales of Florissant, where in 

 their day the earliest birds went out to catch the latest worm there 

 was, and again to the Green River shales of the northwest with their 

 extinct creatures not very different from their descendants of to-day. 

 When we speak the magic names of Uncompahgre, Ouray, Telluride, 

 Las Animas, Sierra Blanca, Pike's Peak, Long's Peak, Gunnison, 

 Manitou, Saguache — I know them all and know them well — we raise 

 a thousand memories of grand scenery, rich mines, geological problems, 

 the crumpling of continents, the wash of great rivers. 



The botany of Colorado runs rampant over all the hills, columbines 

 and gentians, primroses and poppies; sunflowers and lilies; mountain 

 and plain; Colorado is a land of flowers, and better than this, it is a 

 land of problems. Where did they come from? How did they get 

 here? How did they, why did they change? What relation had the 

 movements of the flowers to the vanished glaciers which have left 

 their imprint in lake and moraine, in erratic and sheep-back and 

 furrowed rock, over so much of the surface of Colorado? 



In zoology there is equal richness of forms and equal wealth of 

 problem. How came the trout to move from river to river, changing 

 its spots with every change of stream? How did it pass from the 

 Missouri to the South Platte without reaching the North Platte? 

 How from the Platte to the Arkansas with scarcely a change of any 

 kind? How from the Arkansas to the Rio Grande with changes that 

 every angler notices? How again from the Rio Grande to the Colo- 

 rado? How from the Colorado across the main divide to the Twin 

 Lakes of Leadville ? These are problems worthy of a Sherlock Holmes, 

 and the methods ascribed to that mythical personage are the ordinary 

 methods of science. The same process is used, but it is turned to a 

 higher end than the hunting down of human sins and follies. The 

 problems of geographical distribution, their facts and the causes which 

 lie behind them, occupy a steadily increasing place in the world of 

 science and for the study of very many of these problems there is no 

 field so promising as Colorado. 



I can not close this address without a word in praise of the hon- 

 ored president of Colorado College. It is the highest duty, the noblest 

 privilege of the president of the college to give the institution its 

 personality. Others may give money and buildings, the state may 

 create machinery by which the college works; it remains for him to 

 make it a living person, an Alma Mater, an influence in the formation 

 of character and citizenship. Sixteen years Dr. Slocum has struggled 

 for Colorado College. Sixteen years of courage, devotion, persistence, 

 of a type few other colleges have known. He has sought far and wide 





