The American Museum Journal 



Vol. IX MARCH, 1909 No. 3 



THE DARWIN CELEBRATION. 



THE one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Charles Robert 

 Darwin and the fiftieth anniversary of the pubhcation of 

 "The Origin of Species" were celebrated by the New York 

 Academy of Sciences on February twelfth at the American Museum of 

 Natural History. The occasion was made memorable by the unveiling 

 of a bronze bust of Darwin, the Academy's gift to the ]Museum; also by 

 the dedication of the Synoptic Hall of the Museum as "The Darwin Hall 

 of Invertebrate Zoology," with the unveiling of bronze tablets thus in- 

 scribed at either side of the entrance from the Hall of Forestry. The 

 bust was presented by the Academy's president, Charles Finney Cox, 

 and was accepted on behalf of the trustees of the Museum by President 

 Henry Fairfield Osborn. 



The bust is pronounced by those who knew Darwin personally, and 

 by his sons in England, who have seen photographs of the clay model, 

 the best portrait in the round of the great naturalist ever made. It is 

 the work of William Couper, sculptured from photographs taken when 

 Darwin was fifty years old, at the time of the publication of "The Origin 

 of Species." President Osborn's acceptance of the bust, as a valuable 

 work of art and as an expression of appreciation by the New York 

 Academy of both the technical and the directly educational work of the 

 Museum, gives this impressive likeness of Darwin permanent place in 

 the Darwin Hall of Invertebrate Zoology. Here it will stantl to testify 

 to Charles Darwin's method of scientific study, namely, a humble and 

 direct approach to nature, in self-reliance and with independence of 

 thinking. The speakers of the afternoon, representing Geology, Botany 

 and Zoology, and each claiming Darwin as the inspiration to freedom of 

 thought in the given science, were Professors John James Stevenson, 

 Nathaniel Lord Britton and Hermon Carey Bumpus. 



But a few years ago, even to consider the question of evolution was 

 held to be irrational and immoral, not only by the world at large, but also 

 by the intellectual world, with the exception of a small body of scientists. 



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