60 Kansas Academy of Science. 



organisms, have solved many geologic pioblems, and have furnished a 

 rational basis for the science of paleogeography. And above all, it has 

 furnished the best proofs of organic evolution. 



It is still largely in the descriptive stage, the morphological stage, be- 

 cause it was the last of the biological sciences to seek for facts. But to 

 the vastly increased accumulation of facts in these years it has applied 

 analysis. Fifty years ago we knew almost nothing of the past vertebrate 

 life of our continent north or south, and comparatively little of other 

 parts of the world. But the rocks have yielded up their secrets to many 

 more searchers in these past fifty years. There can be no classification of 

 animal or plant life without paleontology. There can be no intelligent 

 history of the earth without paleontology. There can be no real knowl- 

 edge of the structure of organisms without paleontology; no real proofs 

 of evolution without paleontology. And paleontology is doing all these 

 things. 



The science of psychology, too, is a product of these fifty years. The 

 little that I learned of it when a youth was embraced in what was called 

 "Mental and Moral Philosophy"; its relation to biology was then very 

 slight, a descriptive science, if science it could be called, like so many oth- 

 ers. Its great development in these years has been due chiefly to its inti- 

 mate correlation with anatomy and physiology and experimental study. 

 There are now hundreds of experimental laboratories where there were 

 none in those days. Mind has been studied as a function of the brain and 

 nervous system in health and disease; the study of abnormal psychology 

 with an immense enlargement of our knowledge of insanity, hynosis, or 

 mesmerism as we called it then, multiple personality and all forms of 

 hysteria. It has taught us vastly about the mysterious thing we used to 

 call instinct in the animals below us, and furnished us an immense in- 

 crease in our knowledge of their mentality. And finally the application 

 of this knowledge to human needs has been of great aid to medicine, 

 education, business and all industries. 



And there are many other sciences which time forbids me even to 

 mention, which have had their birth or been greatly extended in these 

 years. I can say nothing of the mathematical sciences and their appli- 

 cations that have contributed much to advancement in all science. In 

 whichever direction we turn we see the applications of science to man's 

 economies, to his happiness and welfare, yea to his very existence. In the 

 science and art of medicine in particular, we have mentioned some of 

 the contributions of physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, anatomy and 

 psychology. In diagnosis, prophylaxis, sanitation, surgery, medicine and 

 therapeutics the doctor of medicine of a half century ago had the feeble- 

 ness of a child in comparison with his strength to-day. And also in war 

 how terrible have been the contributions of physics and chemistry; how 

 beneficent those of sanitation and the medical sciences. The applications 

 of nearly all branches of science to agriculture have been no less great, 

 no less beneficent. Compare the farmer with his hoe of fifty years ago. 



But it is vain to attempt the enumeration of all the gifts science has 

 conferred upon man in these fifty years of the Academy's existence. It 

 is almost another world. The world of fifty years ago considered the 



