424 



ANIMAL BIOLOGY 



The crying need of the present is for more and still more knowl- 

 edge which is secured in the laboratory rather than on the lecture 

 platform. When we realize that if the infants Darwin and Lincoln, 

 who were both born on the same day, had been exchanged by their 

 parents, almost certainly neither would have produced epoch- 

 making contributions to science or civilization, it gives us pause. 

 The Danes have a proverb that it does no harm to be born in a 

 duckyard if you are laid in a Swan's egg — thus emphasizing hered- 



Fig. 27L — The National Academy of Sciences and the National Research 

 Council of the United States, Washington, D. C. The focus of American 

 scientific research. 



ity, though heredity implies not a repetition in kind, but in possi- 

 bilities. We cannot hope to be born equal, but we may ask to be 

 born with an equal opportunity to develop what is in us. At least 

 we can say at present, without fear of contradiction, that Man 

 owes it to himself not to be less mindful of his own stock than he is 

 of that of his domestic animals. 



From every standpoint the mere pittance Man casts to biolog- 

 ical research returns to him many-fold in health and wealth, in 

 comfort and power, and most of all in a broader and more ap- 

 preciative outlook on a congenial world. 'Man becomes more in- 

 telligible, and therefore more controllable, when he recognizes his 

 affiliations and the ancestral strands that linger in his fabric. It 



