Decembee 30, 1921] 



SCIENCE 



645 



that they can not distinguish what is going on 

 ahead of them. We must also admit that there are 

 different directions in which progress may be made. 

 You have all seen the agile crab and been surprised 

 to find how rapidly he gets over the ground, 

 although he never seems to go ahead, but to scram- 

 ble off sideways-. The crab, perhaps, wonders why 

 men are so stupid as to try to move straight for- 

 ward. It is a popular belief, but, not being a 

 zoologist, I am not prepared to vouch for its cor- 

 rectness, that the squid progresses backward, dis- 

 charging a large amount of ink. One might per- 

 haps ask: Is the progress of science sometimes like 

 that of the crab, rapid but not straight forward, or, 

 like the squid, may not the emission of a large 

 amount of printer 's ink really conceal a backward 

 movement? So far as the accumulation of facts is 

 concerned, there is a steady onward progress in 

 science and it is only in the unvrise or premature 

 theorizing on known or supposed facts that science 

 strikes a side track or even progresses backward. 



A few Americans were present at the Aus- 

 tralasian meeting of the British. Association in 

 1914 and had the pleasure of listening to the 

 remarkable addresses on heredity delivered at 

 Melbourne and Sydney by the distinguished 

 guest of the American Association at this pres- 

 ent meeting, Prof. William Bateson. These 

 lectures, for general and vital interest, are 

 almost unsurpassed in the long list of presi- 

 dential addresses delivered before the one or the 

 other of the two great associations. Only a few 

 of us heard them ; many of us have read them ; 

 and it is a joy to know that we are to listen to 

 Professor Bateson to-morrow night. 



Several of the retiring presidents in both 

 associations have ventured into the domain 

 of prophecy. Even now the address of Sir 

 William Crookes at Bristol in 1898 is re- 

 membered. His startling display and discus- 

 sion of the decreasing wheat supply of the 

 world and the necessity of securing nitrogen 

 from the air created an enormous amount of 

 interest. Ten years later, Nichols at Balti- 

 more, in his discussion of " Science and the 

 Practical Problems of the Future," referring 

 to the exhaustion of our supply of fixed nitro- 

 gen, the contingency discussed by Sir Wil- 

 liam Crookes in 1898, and to the exhaustion 

 of our free oxygen more recently discussed 



by Lord Kelvin, concluded that these prob- 

 lems were still so remote as to have no 

 immediate practical importance; but his ad- 

 dress was written at a time when the con- 

 servation movement was just beginning in 

 this country although it had already gained 

 much force, and he referred especially to 

 the coming exhaustion of coal, wood, ores 

 and soils. His address was a tremendous 

 plea for intensive research, and included the 

 significant sentence, " We need not merely 

 research in the universities, but universities 

 for research." One of his final sentences 

 reads, " Beyond lies that future in which it 

 will no longer be a question of supremacy 

 among nations, but of whether the race is to 

 maintain its foothold on the earth." 



The very following year, Chamberlin at 

 Boston, in making " A Geologic Forecast of 

 the Future of our Eace," concluded with a 

 more hopeful outlook and sent his audience 

 home in a much happier frame of mind. 

 He said: 



While, therefore, there is to be, with little doubt, 

 an end to the earth as a planet, and while perhaps 

 previous to this end, conditions inhospitable to life 

 may be reached, the forecast of these contingencies 

 places the event in the indeterminate future. The 

 geologic analogies give fair ground for anticipating 

 conditions congenial to life for millions and tens of 

 millions of years to come, not to urge even larger 

 possibilities. 



But these fifty-one addresses, as well as 

 those that preceded them, are full of signifi- 

 cant and quotable things. We on this side 

 will never forget that remarkably beautiful 

 address of Jordan's in 1910 on " The Making 

 of a Darwin." Those on the other side who 

 heard it will never forget Professor Schaef- 

 er's address at Dundee in 1912, on the " Na- 

 ture, Origin and Maintenance of Life," in 

 which, in closing, he gives a wonderfully 

 elequent description of natural death — " A 

 simple physiological process as natural as the 

 on-coming of sleep." 



This leads us to the side thought, not only 

 of Professor Schaefer's own age at that time 

 (it was sixty-two), but also to the interest 

 attaching to the ages of all of the presidents 



