Dr. DAvID STARR JORDAN: Mr. Toastmaster and President, Members 
of the Academy, Ladies and Gentlemen: It is a pretty hard thing to re- 
spond, impromptu, to all that. I only hope there is some of it that is not 
true. It is a very great pleasure to me to get back here, and yet that 
pleasure is not unmixed with a certain kind of pain. I was just remark- 
ing to Dr. Coulter that in the ‘fierce democracy” of this Indiana Academy 
“there was a Brutus once who would have brooked the eternal devil to 
take his seat in Rome” as easily as he would have sat for dinner in a dress- 
suit. But to see this ‘fierce democracy” in the brook at Brookville—it 
gives me a certain sense of pain. (Laughter.) And speaking of Brutus 
calls to my mind Mare Anthony, and I remember an occasion when a gen- 
tleman was called upon to speak, and he had only one speech which he 
said over und over, and just before going in he asked if anyone could give 
him the address of Mare Anthony. <A friend said, “You know Anthony’s 
style of life and the people he associated with; I should think his address 
would be at the same old place.” (Laughter.) 
I saw a statement not long ago by Henry Fairfield Osborn, that he 
did not think it possible for an American University to produce a Darwin, 
and the reasons he gave were that first, he—that is, the student nowa- 
days—did not have to contend in his early life with something that was 
distasteful to him, as Darwin did; second, scientific men do not have the 
appreciation here that scientific men do in England; and third, that the 
scientific men of this country do not have the leisure to become such as 
Darwin was. It does not seem to me that these reasons are very good. 
I do not think, perhaps Darwin did not think, that any appreciable part 
of his greatness was due to the work in the University which he said was 
incredibly dull, and which led him to feel that he would never read a 
book on a certain subject afterwards. And as for appreciation in this 
country, you have just heard how scientific men are appreciated in Indi- 
ana, and it is even so everywhere we go. And so we have this kind of 
treatment, in America, whereas Darwin was named “gas” by his fellow- 
students, because he confined himself more or less to chemical experi- 
ments. And as for leisure, I know a great many scientific men of leisure 
who have never made any pretense to being Darwins on that account. It 
seems to me that Darwin was first made by heredity. There will never 
be another; you cannot get a man of high scientific rank and quality unless 
heredity starts the thing. You have to get the right kind of stock. There 
is no reason why the right kind of stock should not be found in Indiana, 
