ON BIOLOGY. 



her, very likely for a longer time. Their first child was 

 as black as the veriest Congo that ever was born. When 

 we come to consider that hybridization between the two 

 races has been going on since the earliest days of slavery 

 in this country, and bringing our knowledge of the laws 

 of inheritance to our aid, especially the atavistic phase 

 of them, such a case needs no particular explanation at 

 the present time. 



Still another law, or the law of sexual transmission, 

 offers many curious cases; that is where one of the sexes 

 suddenly exhibits a character or characters which 

 normally only belong to the opposite one. Under this we 

 find those peculiar examples of women having full beards 

 and mustachios; does among deer, with fully developed 

 antlers; hens wearing the spurs of the cock; and hun- 

 dreds of other most remarkable cases to which I forbear 

 to allude at the present time. They are phenomena of 

 great importance to the biologist in his studies of the 

 operation of natural laws. 



Even the question of hybridism has a literature and a 

 broad field of study of its own to-day. Examples of this 

 are common all over the world and in many quarters are 

 receiving the most exact investigation possible, which its 

 high importance so fully deserves. 



Some half a dozen other laws have been carefully dif- 

 ferentiated and elucidated by the biologists, and an end- 

 less series of examples occur upon all hands in Nature to 

 fully illustrate them. The whole question of adaptation 

 also presents us with its numerous well-defined laws, and 

 their exemplification in the animal and vegetable worlds. 

 Their comprehension is absolutely essential to the student 

 who would understand the operations daily being enacted 

 in the natural world about him, on every hand, by every 

 form of living organism. 



For the present, however, we cannot enter further into 

 these fields, and at the most I feel I have brought ample 

 evidence before you wherewith to prove the undoubted 

 value that attaches to the study of the biological sciences. 



This being so, the very practical question next arises, 

 or questions I may say, of, first, to whom should biology 

 be taught; when and where should that instruction be 

 given; and what are the best methods for imparting the 

 necessary knowledge of the science. To these several in- 

 quiries I would answer that I would make its main 

 principles and laws, its essential truths, a prerequisite to 

 the examination of every accepted teacher for a public 

 school throughout the United States, in order that it 



