PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. PAI 
doubt a profusion of the forms called species have been derived from 
them by simple crossing and subsequent recombination. New species 
may be now in course of creation by this means, but the limits of the 
process are obviously narrow. On the other hand, we see no changes in 
progress around us in the contemporary world which we can imagine 
likely to culminate in the evolution of forms distinct in the larger sense. 
By intercrossing dogs, jackals, and wolves new forms of these types 
can be made, some of which may be species, but I see no reason to 
think that from such material a fox could be bred in indefinite time, or 
that dogs could be bred from foxes. 
Whether Science will hereafter discover that certain groups can by 
peculiarities in their genetic physiology be declared to have a preroga- 
tive quality justifying their recognition as species in the old sense, and 
that the differences of others are of such a subordinate degree that they 
may in contrast be termed varieties, further genetic research alone can 
show. I myself anticipate that such a discovery will be made, but I 
cannot defend the opinion with positive conviction. 
Somewhat reluctantly, and rather from a sense of duty, I have 
devoted most of this Address to the evolutionary aspects of genetic 
research. We cannot keep these things out of our heads, though some- 
times we wish we could. The outcome, as you will have seen, is 
negative, destroying much that till lately passed for gospel. Destruc- 
tion may be useful, but it is a low kind of work. We are just about 
where Boyle was in the seventeenth century. We can dispose of 
Alchemy, but we cannot make more than a quasi-chemistry. We are 
awaiting our Priestley and our Mendeléeff. In truth it is not these 
wider aspects of genetics that are at present our chief concern. They 
will come in their time. The great advances of science are made like 
those of evolution, not by imperceptible mass-improvement, but by the 
sporadic birth of penetrative genius. The journeymen follow after him, 
widening and clearing up, as we are doing along the track that Mendel 
found. 
Parr II.—SYDNEY.’ 
Av Melbourne I spoke of the new knowledge of the properties of 
living things which Mendelian analysis has brought us. I indicated 
how these discoveries are affecting our outlook on that old problem 
of natural history, the origin and nature of Species, and the chief 
conclusion I drew was the negative one, that, though we must hold 
to our faith in the Evolution of Species, there is little evidence as to 
how it has come about, and no clear proof that the process is con- 
tinuing in any considerable degree at the present time. The thought 
* Delivered in Sydney on Thursday, August 20, 1914. 
