TWENTY FIFTH ANNUAL MEF/TING. 95 



ground" where it has no chance to germinate. Many fall on the sod, 

 where they are crowded out or cut off from the lawns, and we rarely see 

 them. Here and there one lives and grows into a tree. I suppose that 

 not one plant in 1,000, perhaps not in 5,000, of all the possible plants, 

 counting seeds as possible plants, ever rear themselves into maturity! 

 Therefore, there must be a constant change and a struggle for position 

 and for life, and the survivors of this struggle will be those individuals 

 which are best fitted to perpetuate their kind. All philosophers since 

 La Marck concede that there is this struggle for life. The outcome must 

 be progress. 



Another reason for belief in evolution is that we know, as a matter of 

 fact, geologically, that the earth has changed in its physical character- 

 istics. It has grown colder and warmer; there has been a great glacial 

 age in which ice came down over our hemisphere and the plants were 

 driven to the south, probably not more than ten or fifteen thousand years 

 ago; and other changes are constantly taking place. The whole physical 

 contour of the earth is undergoing a series of transitions and clianges. 

 The animals and plants living on the earth are adapted and fitted into 

 the conditions in which they grow, and we know that their forms fit into 

 chinks in Nature, and their forms therefore must be constantly changing 

 in order to be adapted to their changing environment. The second 

 great reason, therefore, for believing in evolution, is that the earth has 

 changed, and plants and animals must change to fit themselves into the 

 revolving cycles of time. 



Also, in the curious distribution of plants and animals over the world, 

 we find reasons for belief in evolution. Our own Asa Gray was the first 

 man, so far as I know, to enunciate the theory that the distribution of 

 animals and plants over the earth has been brought about by physical 

 changes. Agassiz, who held out against the theory of evolution, sup- 

 posed that all animals and plants were created where they are now, and 

 created in about equal numbers as at the present time. During the early 

 treaties with Japan, various embassies were sent there and certain scien- 

 tists attached. They collected specimens of the animals and plants, 

 especially of the Japanese plants, but also those of China and Karas- 

 chatka, and many of the islands of the Pacific. These plants were largely 

 sent to Asa Gray for study. He was much surprised when he brought 

 these plants together to find that they were remarkably like those which 

 grow upon our own Atlantic coast. The plants of the Alleghany moun- 

 tains of Japan are more alike than those of any other two regions so 

 widely separated. The plants of Japan are more like the plants of our 

 Appalachian mountains than they are like those of California. This 

 at once set Gray to speculating. Up to this time, 1858, Darwin 

 had not written his "Origin of Species," and nearly all the 

 world was lying in blissful ignorance of La Marck's specula- 

 tions, and people supposed that species were created where 

 they were found. They thought at that time that the origin 

 of all natural forms was beyond the business of man. Considering 

 the geolocrical history of the world. Gray found that at one time the land 

 ran all the way around the north pole, and that this land at that time was 

 warm, and that plants of the temperate climes once grew there, about the 

 north pole; elephants and lions and animals of temperate or warmer 



