PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 87 



much influence over the natural productions of the country. But 

 this state of things is rapidly passing away ; the invasion and 

 steady progress of a civilized population, whilst changing gen- 

 erally the face of nature, is obliterating many of the evidences 

 of a former state of things. It may be true that the call for re- 

 cording the traces of previous conditions may be particularly 

 strong in Ethnology and Archaeology ; but in our own branches 

 of the science, the observations and consequent theories of Dar- 

 win having called special attention to the history of species, it 

 becomes particularly important that accurate biological statistics 

 should be obtained for future comparison in those countries 

 where the circumstances influencing those conditions are the most 

 rapidly changing. The larger races of wild animals are dwin- 

 dling down, like the aboriginal inhabitants, under the deadly in- 

 fluence of civilized man. Myriads of the lower orders of animal 

 life, as well .as of plants, disappear with the destruction of forests, 

 the drainage of swamps, and the gradual spread of cultivation, 

 and their places are occupied by foreign invaders. Other races, 

 no doubt, without actually disappearing, undergo a gradual change 

 under the new order of things, which, if perceptible only in the 

 course of successive generations, require so much the more for 

 future proof an accurate record of their state in the still unsettled 

 condition of the country. In the Old World almost every at- 

 tempt to compare the present state of vegetation or animal life 

 with that which existed in uncivilized times is in a great meas- 

 ure frustrated by the absolute want of evidence as to that former 

 state ; but in North America the change is going forward, as it 

 were, close under the eye of the observer. This consideration 

 may one day give great value to the reports of the naturalist sent 

 by the Government, as we have seen, at the instigation of the 

 Smithsonian Institution and other promoters of science, to ac- 

 company the surveys of new territories." 



Having said this much in defence of the scientific men of the 

 United States, I wish, in conclusion, to prefer some very serious 

 charges against the country at large, or, rather, as a citizen of 

 the United States, to make some very melancholy and humili- 

 ating confessions. 



The present century is often spoken of as " the age of science,'* 

 and Americans are somewhat disposed to be proud of the mannei 

 in which scientific institutions are fostered and scientific investi- 

 gators encouraged on this side of the Atlantic. 



Our countrymen have made very important advances in many 



