ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. 
Witpur A. CoGcsHALh 
The question of Evolution has long occupied the attention of scientists. 
Especially has this been true in biological lines, and we are apt to think of 
the probable (or certain) changes that have taken place, either in plants or 
animals, in connection with the word evolution. As soon as biological 
investigation had proceeded to a point where significant differences and 
likenesses were well established among certain forms, the laws underlying 
the changes were sought, and are being sought. We have now a more or 
less satisfactory theory built up based on certain fundamentals, though it 
contains in part some elements of the speculative and the probable. One 
of these truths that seems established is that some organisms have existed 
in the very remote past, in a quite different form from what they now have, 
and that it is very probable, if not certain, that they will change their forms, 
habits, ete., still more as time goes on. 
In a little broader way we may say that evolutionary changes are just as 
certain in the earth as a whole, or in the entire system of plenatary bodies, or 
for that matter, in the whole visible universe. This conclusion 1s based on 
several physical laws which man has discovered and believes to be true. 
If the law of conservation of energy is true, then we have no alternative but 
to believe that the continued radiation of heat from the sun and the earth 
will eventually result in these bodies coming to a lower temperature, and 
that the sun will at some future date become dark, cold and dense. We 
must also believe that its power to radiate heat and light was very different 
in the remote past from what 1t is now. In as much as the sun Is not essen- 
tially different from a million other stars nm the sky, it seems very probable 
that the whole visible universe has undergone very great changes in past 
time, and will undergo changes just as great in the future. 
There is really no more reason to suppose that the stars and the moon 
have always been as we see them now, than to suppose that because an oak 
“tree has stood for a year without sensible change it has always been that 
way and will continue so indefinitely. The oak goes through its life history, 
or certain phases of 1t, in so short a time that we can see its whole history 
in less than a life time, but the changes in the tree while faster, are no more 
certain than those in the sun or earth. 
