THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 15 



Association fifteen years ago — Sir E. Sharpey-Schafer. He was the 

 pioneer who opened up this field of investigation and has done more than 

 anyone to place our knowledge of the nature and action of the glands of 

 internal secretion on a precise basis of experimental observation. With 

 such sources of knowledge being ever extended and others of great 

 importance, such as the study of Heredity, which have been left 

 unmentioned, we are justified in the hope that Man will be able in due 

 time not only to write his own history but to explain how and why 

 events took the course they did. 



In a brief hour I have attempted to answer a question of momentous 

 importance to all of us— What is Man's origin ? Was Darwin right when 

 he said that Man, under the action of biological forces which can be observed 

 and measured, has been raised from a place amongst anthropoid apes to 

 that which he now occupies ? The answer is Yes ! and in returning 

 this verdict I speak but as foreman of the jury — a jury which has 

 been empanelled from men who have devoted a lifetime to weighing the 

 evidence. To the best of my ability I have avoided, in laying before you 

 the evidence on which our verdict was found, the role of special pleader, 

 being content to follow Darwin's own example — Let the Truth speak for 

 itself. 



