8 UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI BULLETIN 



cade are sure to take in future histories of the science of Hfe, 

 by reason of two great discoveries : de Vries's promulgation 

 and apparent experimental proof of the theory of the origin 

 of species through mutations ; and the rediscovery and veri- 

 fication of the long-buried and forgotten conclusions of an 

 Austrian monk concerning the laws of heredity. The first 

 of these, in the opinion of many, though not all, biologists, 

 reveals to us for the first time the real nature of the process 

 by which new species are formed, and is, at the least, a not 

 less important contribution to the science than was the 

 natural-selection hypothesis ; the second has comprehensively 

 transformed our conception of heredity and promises to bring 

 the seemingly very various and confused facts concerning the 

 relations of progeny to ancestors under a beautifully clear and 

 simple and genuinely predictive system of laws. It even 

 promises to put into the hands of the human race the power 

 (however little the race may have the disposition) intelligently 

 to control and transform, no longer merely its external en- 

 vironment, but even its own constitution, to correct and purify 

 that legacy of inner corruption which thus far 



"From age to age descends unchecked, 

 The sad bequest of sire to son, — 

 The body's taint, the mind's defect." 



It would be hard to conceive of any piece of scientific knowl- 

 edge which could touch the issues of human life more deeply. 

 It is, then, at a period when there is uniquely much that 

 is new and revolutionary doing in the natural sciences that we 

 are to review their far-flung battle-line. The novelty and — 

 if I may use the word — the fundamentality of the character- 

 istic conceptions and problems of the science of the present, 

 make especially timely a consideration of the relations be- 

 tween the several sciences. These recent developments have 

 been due, in a considerable degree, to a sort of cross-fertiliza- 

 tion that has taken place between separate disciplines ; much 

 recent progress, also, has tended to obliterate the once sharp 

 lines of division between certain contiguous fields of knowl- 



