REPORT OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 33 



ADDRESSES AT OPENING OF THE STATION FOR EXPERIMENTAL 



EVOLUTION, JUNE II. 1904. 



Introductory Address by C. B. Davenport. 



Ladies and Gentlemen : On behalf of the resident staff of the 

 station I bid you welcome to our opening exercises. We do not 

 celebrate here the completion of a building, we are dedicating no 

 pile of bricks and lumber — rather, this day marks the coming to- 

 gether for the first time of the resident staff for their joint work, 

 and we dedicate this bit of real earth, its sprouting plants and its 

 breeding animals, here and now to the study of the laws of the 

 evolution of organic beings. 



Representatives of the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Institu- 

 tion, we feel the full weight of the responsibility we accept in receiv- 

 ing the grant that you have made to this station. You have given 

 us a fair start. It is for us to justify your confidence in us and the 

 worthiness of the work to command continued and increasing sup- 

 port. However, as many of our experiments will demand years for 

 their completion, quick returns must not be looked for. Without 

 making big promises of things that we are going to do, we may state 

 our confidence that important scientific results can be gained in the 

 work that we have begun, and assure you that whatever devotion 

 and scientific training can achiev'e we shall, up to the limit of our 

 resources, do. We work, however, not alone, but with the a.s.sistance 

 of our neighbors and scientific colleagues. 



Gentlemen of the Wawepex Society, this celebration is yours. 

 But for your generous proffer of the land intrusted to you by the 

 late John D. Jones for the use of science, this station would never 

 have been established here. Your appreciation of research has made 

 possible the realization at Cold Spring Harbor of that dream of 

 Bacon, who saw in the new Atlantis gardens devoted to the experi- 

 mental modification and improvement of animals and plants. Your 

 faith in our projected work increases the burden of our responsibilit3^ 



Gentlemen of the board of managers of the Biological Laboratory 

 of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, this new station 

 comes as a neighbor of your laboratory, glad to give and receive 

 scientific companionship. We shall get .stimulus from the enthu- 

 siastic students of nature who work at the laboratory each summer, 

 and trust to recruit from them some who, as investigators, shall 

 cooperate in the work of the station. 



