198 The Evolution of Botany. 



original research while they are tied up to the routine of class-work in 

 our schools and colleges. You will remember that Miss Youmans em- 

 phasized this fact last year in her paper upon Asa Gray. We need 

 teachers in botany and in the other sciences who will do more than 

 merely instruct their pupils in the contents of text-books in what has 

 already become common knowledge. We want teachers who shall be 

 discoverers masters in the field of original research and who shall 

 inspire others to this high order of work. This result can only be se- 

 cured by emancipating our best men and women, too from mere 

 routine work, by insuring them a competence, and bidding them de- 

 vote their best energies to original investigation. I hope the time will 

 come when our men of wealth will not only endow libraries and museums 

 and college lectureships, but will give generously in support of original 

 scientific research. Science is the fertile mother of progress the foun- 

 dation of our modern civilization. In no way can humanity be helped 

 more effectively than by stimulating its beneficent conquests. It is 

 one of our objects as an association, and by means of these lectures, to 

 create a public opinion which shall demand the generous support of 

 original scientific investigation. America, as the lecturer has said, is 

 behind Europe in this respect, but no country owes more to science 

 than America, none has more to expect in the future from the results 

 of scientific progress. Let the wealth of America, therefore, be freely 

 given in this behalf. 



COL. WILLIAM HEMSTREET: 



It would seem that the microscope applied to botanical studies 

 should bring us very near to the secret of Nature as to the origin of 

 life its development out of inorganic matter. I should like to ask of 

 any one competent to answer the question, whether any of the bota- 

 nists eminent in microscopical investigations have observed the spon- 

 taneous generation of living organisms! 



DR. JANES: 



The result of the most careful research thus far goes to prove that 

 spontaneous generation, or abiogenesis, as a present fact, has not been 

 demonstrated. Some eminent evolutionists, as Prof. Le Conte, go so 

 far as to assert that the law of evolution, even assuming spontaneous 

 generation as a fact of the past, necessarily makes it impossible under 

 existing conditions ; we have gone on beyond that stage in biological 

 development. Bastian and others have claimed abiogenesis as an ex- 

 isting fact, but their experiments, in my judgment, were not sufficiently 

 guarded to warrant the acceptance of their conclusions. I suppose all 

 consistent evolutionists believe that somehow life began by an entirely 



