92 THE SHORTER SCIENTIFIC PAPERS 



permit their evaluation. Should the measurement of the 

 mean in the tenth or even the one hundredth generation 

 present no advancement, failure is not necessarily implied. 

 Nature has devoted fifty millions of years or more to her 

 work. There should be no discouragement if a few paltry 

 years of investigation fail in duplicating her methods. 



It is with a feeling not unmixed with pessimism, how- 

 ever, that one views the conditions under which work of 

 the character outlined must evidently go forward. Those 

 engaged in teaching have with a few exceptions time for 

 little more than an occasional investigation of limited 

 scope, particularly in a field which requires continuous 

 application. Governmental departments where it could 

 best be taken to a successful issue have only too often 

 been subservient to political policies which demand im- 

 mediate results. An ounce of compiled compendium is 

 — to them — worth more than a ton of painstaking inves- 

 tigations which makes an advance on a theory. Looking 

 a few generations into the future is not their concern.^ 

 A remedy for such conditions clearly lies in endowments 

 either in connection with universities, or through the 

 establishment of the specialized private institution. 



That the problem of applied evolution will eventually 

 be solved there can be no doubt. That it will occur in 

 our generation may only be expressed as a hope. 



■"^Exceptional work has been done by those more or less closely connected with 

 certain State Agricultural Experiment Stations. The names of East and Hayes, of 

 Connecticut, Pearl, of Maine, Emerson, of Nebraska, Dean Davenport, Rietz and 

 Smith, of Illinois, are familiar to all interested in the application of the principles of 

 evolution. One often conjectures, however, as to the extent to which some of the 

 most valuable contributions are in reality "by-products" of investigations meeting 

 the approval of the "Missouri" type of legislator. 



I 



