42 Kansas Academy of Science. 



pushed vigorously, some results must follow sooner or later. 



The value of the work of the scientist may be seen in the 

 changed attitude of the people to-day toward it. In the be- 

 ginning of the seventeenth century Bruno was burned at the 

 stake for teaching that the earth is not the center of the uni- 

 verse. Early in the eighteenth century Newton was pro- 

 nounced impious and a heretic for teaching that the law of 

 gravitation extended throughout the universe. In the nine- 

 teenth century, how many of our greatest scientists have met 

 much opposition and ridicule. Even to-day, I fear, there are 

 some educators who fail to appreciate its worth, and who 

 ascribe to its workers a lower type of mind, an inferior 

 culture. 



Nevertheless, in the study of the history of any of the 

 sciences, we are impressed with the way its truths have 

 grown, though often oppressed by the customary thought of 

 the times. We find in them, as in every historical movement 

 which has had for its purpose the elevation of man, the grad- 

 ual acceptance of its truths until its acceleration was suffi- 

 cient to sweep over the errors which opposed it, the opposi- 

 tion only helping to remove the dross which might be clinging 

 to the gold. A further and deeper study reveals the fact that 

 the growth of our knowledge in the truths of the material 

 sphere gives foundation for our political, social and moral im- 

 provement. While we contemplate the appropriations of the 

 past years made by our national and state governments, also 

 the philanthropic gifts for stipulated scientific investigations 

 in every line of research, and observe their general apprecia- 

 tion, we cannot fail to be impressed with the fact of their in- 

 creasingly recognized value. 



While the past century has shown wonderful growth, yet 

 when we turn to the future with all our accumulated resources 

 for work, our inheritance of the past, may we not confidently 

 hope that the exercise of the same indomitable energy, cour- 

 age and intellect that charaterized the scientists of the past 

 will solve, in a much shorter time, the many problems in all the 

 fields of science that bid us a hearty welcome. As we con- 

 template some of the problems of the future, we find them as- 

 sociated with the past. Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" 

 gave to biologists the greatest working hypothesis yet sug- 

 gested. A problem to be completed in the future is the trac- 

 ing of all the relations of the various classes of animal and 



