16 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



of Species in 1859. The foundations for this ciihninating work were 

 laid by not less than twenty centuries of discontinuous and unorgan- 

 ized efforts by the devotees to anatomy, pathology, botany, geology, 

 and more recently, physiology, zoology, and paleontology; but it was 

 reserved for Darwin, Wallace, Spencer, and their coadjutors to discover 

 and to establish the principles which unify all these collateral sciences 

 in the generalization called the doctrine of evolution. The term biology 

 was popularized by Spencer in 1865; and in the brief interval which 

 has since elapsed demonstrable biological knowledge has grown with 

 astonishing rapidity to an aggregate which constitutes one of the most 

 important advances made in the progress of our race. 



"It was a natural and logical sequence, therefore, in ahgnment with 

 this progress, that the Carnegie Institution of Washington should have 

 established three departments of research devoted severally to inves- 

 gations in different fields of the rapidly enlarging domain of biological 

 science. And it is similarly consonant with the spirit of the age and 

 with the aims of the Institution that the Eugenics Record Office should 

 have developed in close affiliation with the Department of Experi- 

 mental Evolution and with the Biological Laboratory of the Brooklyn 

 Institute of Arts and Sciences at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. 

 The stimulus for progress brought to both these organizations by the 

 Director of the Department of Experimental Evolution, the formation 

 of a eugenics section under his secretaryship in the American Breeder's 

 Association, and the sympathetic interest in all these enterprises shown 

 by Mrs. E. H. Harriman, are among the earlier favoring influences 

 which led to the establishment of the Eugenics Record Office in 1910. 

 In April of that year Mrs. Harriman purchased for the purposes of the 

 project a tract of land of about eighty acres, near Cold Spring Harbor, 

 and in October following the Office was installed in a dwelling house 

 on this land. 



''In accordance with Mrs. Harriman' s preference it was determined 

 at the outset that the work of the Eugenics Record Office should be 

 work of research. It was recognized that the first need is for knowl- 

 edge and that when this is gained applications will follow in due course. 

 The principal objects of the Office are the following: 



"a. To serve eugenical interests in the capacity of a repository and a 



clearing house. 

 "6. To build up an analytical index of the inborn traits of American families. 

 "c. To train field workers to gather data of eugenical import. 

 "d. To maintain a field staff actually engaged in gathering such data, 

 "e. To cooperate with other institutions and with persons concerned 



with eugenical study. 

 "/. To investigate the manner of inheritance of specific human traits. 

 "g. To publish the results of researches. 



