24 MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND THE PEOPLE. 



JACOB REIGHARD, ANN ARBOR. 

 , (Address of the Retiring I'resident.) 



Like the American Association for the Advancement of Science (and 

 other similar organizations), the Michigan Academy is an expression of 

 the voluntary scientific activity of the people of the State, and depends 

 for its continued usefulness on a rational interest and a helpful co-opera- 

 tion on the part of the people. 



It has therefore occurred to me to inquire in what way the biological 

 sciences, from whose adherents. the Academy draws most of its member- 

 ship, touch the people: what in the growth of these sciences makes 

 toward and what away from a contributory interest on the part of the 

 people. By contributory interest is meant that which aids in the 

 upbuilding of the sciences by adding something of importance to their 

 store of fact or theory. The question that is raised is then, not what 

 benefit do the people receive from the biological sciences, for these are 

 many in the practical and in the educational application of these 

 sciences; the question is rather how many or how do the j)eople benefit 

 these sciences by aiding. in their further. growth. 



I shall sjjeak from the zoological standpoint, but what is true of 

 zoology, is true, in this matter, in large measure, also of botany. 



The question seems to be intimately associated with the recent history 

 of zoology. 



The year 1859 found zoologists, the world over, working industriously 

 and quietly at almost purely descriptive work. No more was expected 

 of any zoGlogist than that he should discover and record the wonders 

 of nature as revealed in the animal kingdom, and that he should duly 

 express his astonishment at the infinite wisdom shown by the creator 

 in arranging all these details. Of attempts to get at the meaning of 

 the details there were very few. The popular notion of the zoologist's 

 aim in life is expressed in a question that I remember to have heard 

 asked in my student days, by a much respected jirofessor of literature 

 of his zoological colleague. "Well now what is that animal curious for?" 

 In this year appeared Darwin's "Origin of Species." Its effect is thus 

 graphically described by V. Graff in a recent lecture. "It came like a 

 lightning flash in a period of quiet descriptive Avork, a period which had 

 accustomed itself to consider the nature-phil()soi)liy ideas of the begin- 

 ning of the century as absurd freaks of imagination, unproved and 

 unprovable, a period which therefore clung anxiously to its foundation 

 of facts. How the theory of natural selection jiut life into this dry 

 describing, how it hurried the knife of the anatomist, and what a broad 

 prospect it opened before the hitherto short sighted eye of the systema- 

 tist! About the mummies of the species which, separated from^ one 

 another by carefully formulated Latin diagnoses, filled the collections, 

 there suddenly appeared the constricting noose of blood relationship. 

 The petrified remains of extinct forms, hitherto shut out from the com- 



