Early Naturalists 



45 



A hundred years ago the scientific thought of America was 

 as firmly rooted in the belief in the fixity of species as was 

 that of Europe. American colleges were almost, if not 

 entirely, presided over by doctors of divinity, and there was 

 even a feeling in many quarters against the sciences, especially 

 of geology, as tending to unsettle the belief of the young in 

 the Mosaic account of creation ; and yet, even so early as 

 1833 there appears to have been an underlying current of 

 unrest present in the minds of some, for in the second Amer- 

 ican edition of "Bakewell's Geology," published in this year, 

 under the editorship of Silliman, 

 the lawyer, chemist and geologist, 

 who was professor of chemistry and 

 natural science at Yale, we read 

 "Any attempt to disprove the 

 truth or genuineness of the Penta- 

 teuch, and Genesis in particular, is 

 wholly superfluous, and quite aside 

 from any question that can in this 

 age be at issue between geologists. 

 No geologist at the present day 

 erects any system upon the basis 

 of the scripture history." The 

 editor however accepted the Mosaic 

 account as true and endeavored to 

 bring it into accordance with the 

 geological record. In the first 

 edition of the same work published 

 four years earlier, Silliman con- 

 sidered the discoveries of geology 

 as consistent with the bH:)lical 



story, stating that "respecting the deluge, there can be but one 

 opinion . . , geology fully confirms the scripture history of 

 that event. ' ' ^" Archaic as these views appear today, they show 

 none the less the leaven that was beginning, slowly, yet none 

 the less surely, to work in men's minds, preparing them for 

 the acceptance of the gospel of truth. The anti-Darwinian 

 attitude in America was supported largely by the influence 

 of Louis Agassiz, who, in spite of his personal friendship for 

 Darwin, was ever his bitter opponent in the arena of science. 

 But Darwin found an equally powerful champion in Asa Gray, 

 the botanist, and colleague of Agassiz on the Harvard College 

 faculty. Darwin had met Gray on a visit of tlie latter to 

 England, some years before the i^ublication of the "Origin 

 of Species," and in its preparation he frequently consulted 



^"Merrill, "Contributions to the History of American Geology," 

 Eep. U. S. N. M., 1904, pp. 292 and 317. 



Spencer Fullerton Baird 

 First U. S. Fish Commissioner. 



Courtesy of the U. S. Bureau 

 of Fisheries. 



in 



