38 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



In view of these facts we decided that a portion of the funds 

 intrusted to us by Mr. Carnegie to encourage investigation, research, 

 and discovery should be devoted to a Department of Experimental 

 Biology, a main feature of which should be the establishment of a 

 station for the study of experimental evolution, to be located here 

 at Cold Spring Harbor, and it is this station that we are inaugurat- 

 ing to-day. 



We know that experimental investigation, especially in this field, 

 is a slow process, and uncertain in its results, and that we must be 

 patient. This is a seed that we are planting ; for the buds and 

 blossoms and fruits we must wait, believing that they will come in 

 due season, although they will probably not be what we now expect. 



The scope of the work of this department of experimental biology 

 is wide and far-reaching. Already the results of biological research 

 have had a strong influence on philosophy and theology, and we 

 can hardly even imagine what the outcome may be in sociology and 

 political science. 



The problems of evolution and development through heredity 

 involve the structure and functions of that part of the living organ- 

 ism which seems to be necessary for what we call mental action, from 

 the lowest, dimmest forms of consciousness, through memory and 

 will to the highest flights of art, philosophy, poetry, and religion. 



Let us hope that the work of this station will be so well done that 

 by the time it celebrates its fiftieth anniversary it will have demon- 

 strated the wisdom of its establishment. 



Prof. Franklin W. Hooper, director of the Brooklyn Institute of 

 Arts and Sciences and secretary of the board of managers of its 

 biological laboratory, located on the ground adjacent to the new 

 station, next spoke. He regretted the absence of Mr. Eugene G. 

 Blackford, president of the board of managers of the laboratory, 

 due to illness, and welcomed the new station as a neighbor of the 

 biological laboratory. 



Mr. Davenport, in introducing Prof. H. de Vries, said : 



I have before me two or three books : One, by Professor Weismann, 

 dealing with the " Germ Plasm," presents the great guiding theory 

 of the development of the individual. But the foundations of this 

 theory were laid some years before Weismann, in a little work en- 

 titled " Intracellular Pangenesis," from which work, consequently, 

 the modern science of cytological embryology dates. 



Every one knows of the great revolution wrought in physics and 

 chemistry by the new science of physical chemistry. One of the 



