390 THE EVIDENCE OF EVOLUTION. 



of university freedom. I have needed nearly twenty years to develop 

 them and to gather the evidence by means of which I hope to convince 

 yon. I kept my secret until some years ago, and worked only for 

 myself. In this respect old universities, as ours are in Europe, have 

 a distinct advantage over your young American institutions. AVith 

 you all is sparkling and boiling, Avith us it is the quietness of solitude, 

 even in the midst of a busy city. But your students and teachers 

 are expected to show what they are doing, and to produce their results 

 at short intervals. In Europe, on the contrary, we are trusted and 

 left free even on this jjoint. Hardly anybody has ever asked me 

 what I was doing, and even those who from time to time visited my 

 garden were content w^ith what I could sliow them, without telling 

 my real difficulties and my real hopes. 



To my mind this is a high privilege. The solution of the most 

 intricate problems often does not require vast laboratory equipment, 

 but it always requires patience and perseverance. Patience and per- 

 severance in their turn require freedom from all pressure, and espe- 

 cially from the need of publishing early and often unripe results. 

 Even now I would prefer to spend this hour in recounting the obli- 

 gations which the doctrine of evolution is under to such men as 

 Lamarck and Darwin. I should like to point out how they have 

 freed inquiry from prejudice and drawn the limits between religion 

 jind science ; how they have caused the principle of evolution to be the 

 ruling idea in the whole dominion of the study of the organic world, 

 and how this idea has been suggestive and successful, comprehensive 

 and hopeful during a whole century of continuous research. Every- 

 Avhere it is recognized to take the leadership. It has been the means 

 of innunieral)le discoveries, and whole sciences have been started from 

 it. Embryology and ontogeny, phylogeny, and the new conceptions 

 of taxonomy, paleontology of plants and of animals, sociology, his- 

 tory, and medicine, and even the life history of the earth on which we 

 live, are in reality in their present form the products of the idea of 

 ev^olution. 



Instead of telling you of my own work, I should like to sketch the 

 [)art which of late tlie scientists of the United States have taken in 

 this work. ISIainly in two lines a rapid advancement has been 

 inaugurated in this country. I refer to the pure university studies 

 and the worlv of the agricultural stations. Highly valuable is the 

 appli(;ation of science to agricidture in the improvement of races. 

 Each of you knows how this artificial production of races of animals 

 and i)lants was one of the great sources of evidence on which Darwin 

 founded his theory. But at his time the available evidence was only 

 very scanty when we compare it with the numerous facts and the 

 improved methods which now are the result of half a century's 

 additional work. America and Europe have combined in this line, 



