8o Presidential Address 



healthily habitable by energetic races 

 is attracting the attention of people of 

 power, philosophising biologists should 

 not attempt to give their science away 

 to Chemistry and Physics. Sections D 

 and H and I and K are not really sub- 

 servient to A and B. Biology is an 

 independent science, and it is served, not 

 dominated, by Chemistry and Physics. 



Scientific men are hostile to supersti- 

 tion, and rightly so, for a great many 

 popular superstitions are both annoying 

 and contemptible; yet occasionally the 

 term may be wrongly applied to practices 

 of which the theory is unknown. To a 

 superficial observer some of the practices 

 of biologists themselves must appear 

 grossly superstitious. To combat malaria 

 Sir Ronald Ross does not indeed erect an 

 altar ; no, he oils a pond, making libation 

 to its presiding genii. What can be more 

 ludicrous than the curious and evidently 

 savage ritual, insisted on by United States 

 Officers, at that hygienically splendid 

 achievement the Panama Canal, the 

 ritual of punching a hole in every dis- 



