REPORT OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 45 



It is a very attractive image, and I much regret not to be allowed 

 to follow it any longer. For us it points to the probability that the 

 very first organisms must have been inhabitants of the high sea, 

 floating in the waves ; or, as it is now called, they must have been 

 members of the plankton. Thence the conclusion that it is within 

 the plankton that new creations are to be sought for. If really they 

 are still occurring in our days, it must be the high sea that conceals 

 them. Obviously these first organisms must have had the lowest 

 possible degree of organization. They were not cells, they can not 

 have had any differentiation. They must have consisted of a uni- 

 form jelly, with only the capacity of increasing their mass. If such 

 a jelly could be detected, what possibilities would not be opened to 

 experiments on evolution ! The chance may seem very small, but 

 then, before Rontgen and Curie there was no chance at all of dis- 

 covering X-rays and radio-activity. The plankton has to become 

 one of the main points of interest for all who care for experimental 

 evolution. 



The other end of the evolutionar}^ development is the evolution 

 that is still now going on. Here we are on a more assured ground, 

 though even here the methods and the starting points have yet to be 

 discovered. These, however, may be attained by strenuous work, 

 attacking palpable phenomena from obvious sides, and subjecting 

 them to the general methods of ordinary experimental inquiries. 



Two main lines have to be followed. One is the direct .study of 

 variability ; the other relates to the dependency of this variability 

 on the outer conditions of life. The first line uses the statistical 

 methods, while the second relies chiefly on the experiment. Both 

 have to be cultivated as well on botanical as on zoological ground. 

 Four large divisions are here indicated for the daily work of the 

 laboratory ; but it is a manifest advantage that the leader of the 

 work should be conversant with all of them. Mathematical and 

 statistical studies have their eminent representatives in Europe, both 

 among zoologists and among botanists, and likewise experimental 

 work has not been neglected by them ; but none of them com- 

 bines the severe requirements of mathematics and statistics with the 

 looser methods of morphological inquiry, and with the strict rules 

 of experiment, and this as well in the study of animals as in that of 

 plants. Such wide erudition and large experience, however, are 

 preeminently necessary in the man who has to take the direction 

 of this new laboratory, and it is from the innermost core of my 



