KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



The mountains were uplifted after cretaceous beds were laid down in the great 

 sea that covered all that is now western North America. The cretaceous and older 

 strata are. on the flanks of the mountains, turned up on their edges, as at the Garden 

 of the Gods. After this upturn, the tertiary lakes were formed and the surface for- 

 mations of the plains deposited in them. There has been some uplift since, but the 

 eroding forces have been at work on the plains as well as on the mountains, and some 

 of the forms into which the mountains have been carved have been repeated on the 

 plains. Fantastic carvings of arches, niches and temples are cut in miocene grit or 

 cretaceous chalk. Monument rocks, mounds and promontories are cut by weather 

 in Dakota sandstones, tertiary clays, or triassic red beds, and these forms in secluded 

 valleys, near to or remote from railways, become places of resort; and the bracing 

 air of the prairies, the skies as clear as those of Italy, the sea-like horizon, with the 

 fertility of the prairie soils, all combine to assure us that the great plains shall be 

 the abode of an abundant, healthy and intellectual population, which in the years to 

 come will, perhaps, do some honor to us, as those who strove to implant, with the 

 maize and the wheat, also the seeds of science and a love of truth on the great plains 

 of America. 



[Then followed an exhibit of the various kinds of scenery of the plains, from the moraines of North 

 Dakota to the caflons of Texas, by transparencies in the stereopticon illumined by strong electric light, 

 and manipulated by Professor Blake, of the State University.] 



THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF THE HUMAN FACE. 



BY A. H. THOMPSON, TOPEKA, KAS. 



Of Evolution. It is not necessary at this late day, in the twilight of the nine- 

 teenth century, to defend evolution. To the truly scientific mind it has become a 

 great working principle, like gravitation, and is no longer a theory or mere hypoth- 

 esis, that is open to doubt and criticism. It rests secure upon the very pedestal 

 of nature itself. The book of nature is the record of evolution. Every animal and 

 plant carries in its structure the history of the origin and development of its species. 

 The growth of an individual is an epitome of the evolution of the species. The 

 development of an organ is the history of the origin and evolution of a function, 

 or, indeed, of its decay, as when an organ dwindles to a rudiment from disuse. 



Birth, growth, origin, development, genesis, evolution, inception, unfolding, are 

 inseparable from the life history of every species, of every individual, of every or- 

 gan, of every tissue, of every cell. As the individual has grown, so has the species. 

 The principle of evolution applies to all and explains all. It is the working prin- 

 ciple of biology, and to the scientific biologist requires no laudation nor explana- 

 tion. 



Prof. Joseph Le Conte says ("Evolution and Religious Thought") that ''Every 

 individual animal body has become what it now is by a gradual process. Com- 

 mencing as a microscopic spherule of living but apparently unorganized proto- 

 plasm, it gradually added cell to cell, tissue to tissue, organ to organ, and function 

 to function; thus becoming more and more complete in the mutual action of its 

 correlated;parts, as it passed successively through the stages of germ, egg, embryo, 

 and infant, to maturity. This ascending series of genetically connected stages is 

 called the embryonic or ontogenic series, the genesis of the individual." Again, he 

 says: "Embryonic development is the type of evolution; and evolution is continu- 



