REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT, 1918. 19 



researches already published and in press assure the department 

 a position of leadership in a branch of biology which sustains 

 fundamental relations to the older and highly wrought sciences 

 of anatomy, phj^siology, and pathology, and the closest relations 

 likewise to the less definite but widely comprehensive science of 

 anthropology^ 



Professor Mall not only attained preeminence among American 

 leaders in anatomy, but the originaUty and the generaUty of his 

 researches are held by competent judges to entitle him to a posi- 

 tion of equaUty along with the pioneers and the masters in this 

 ancient science, whose history, according to Mall's own estimate, 

 is typified by the names of Aristotle, VesaUus, Bichat, and His. 

 To this remarkable capacity as an investigator he added that 

 of a great teacher of men, not in the didactic sense of the word, 

 but in his abihty to make students do their own thinking. He 

 understood well that little formal instruction was needed in his 

 laboratory in the presence of evolving discoveries and advances. 

 But MaU was much more than a speciahst in the branches of 

 biology to which he devoted the most of his time and attention. 

 He was an uncommonly accomplished man of the world so far as 

 knowledge of men, motives, and methods can supply versatihty 

 in fiscal affairs. He was a man of remarkably clear insight; he 

 sought always to see the universe as it is, and he was much more 

 keenly aware than most of us that hmitations exist on every hand. 

 He was an ideally typical man of science; modest in reaHzing the 

 relatively small progress man has made in discovering his rela- 

 tions to the plexus of phenomena of which he forms a part; con- 

 fident of the continuity w^hile conscious of the slowness of that 

 progress; and facing his colleagues and contemporaries generally 

 with the same frankness and the same truthfulness with which 

 he approached the problems presented by his favorite fields of 

 research. 



The Institution is called upon to record the loss also of another 

 highly productive investigator in the death, on September 11, 

 1918, of Professor Herbert Levi Osgood, Research Associate in 

 early American history since October 19, 1911. 



