282 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIII. No. 582. 



ADDRESS OF WELCOME BT PRESIDENT 

 ANGELL. 



Ladies and Gentlemen: I am glad to 

 know that I can properly use this familiar 

 style of address. For I see before me 

 several ladies who have by their learning 

 fairly earned their place in this society of 

 scientists. 



In the name of the regents and the facul- 

 ties of the university I extend to you all 

 a hearty welcome to our halls. We thank 

 you that you have done us the honor to 

 choose this as your place of meeting. We 

 are proud to see under our roof so many 

 eminent representatives of colleges, uni- 

 versities and learned societies, so many who 

 have by careful study and investigation 

 done much to enlarge the boundaries of 

 human knowledge. 



Perhaps you will permit me as your 

 senior to say that when I look back to my 

 college days — now nearly three score years 

 in the past— nothing is more striking to 

 me than the change which has been wrought 

 in the attitude and methods of the teachers 

 of science in our schools of higher learning. 



In my student days in the curriculum of 

 the best colleges a very brief period, from 

 six to twelve weeks, was given to any sci- 

 ence. The instruction consisted mainly in 

 compelling students to memorize text-books. 

 A few illustrative lectures with experi- 

 ments performed by the professor were 

 sometimes given, which often instructed us 

 by their failure rather than by their suc- 

 cess. Laboratories there were none in any 

 institution. The professors who made any 

 original investigation or who betrayed any 

 knowledge much beyond the range of the 

 text-books were not numerous. From svich 

 teaching not much inspiration could be ex- 

 pected. 



One of the first men to startle us and 

 inspire us by the revelation of new methods 

 was Louis Agassiz. He accomplished this 

 not alone by his training of pupils at Cam- 



bridge and Penikese, but by his popular 

 lectures. As I recall some of these I feel 

 again kindling within me the glow of en- 

 thusiasm with which we listened to him, 

 as with his winsome French accent he told 

 us of the development of animal life, and 

 with his skilful and rapid drawing he made 

 a fish fairly flop out of the blackboard. 

 His enthusiasm for research was contagious 

 and soon we had votaries of all the sciences 

 questioning nature at a hundred points. 



From those days progress was rapid. 

 And so now the spirit of research is dom- 

 inant among all scientific men. The per- 

 functory and mechanical teachers have 

 largely disappeared, and happily the pres- 

 ent generation of students are taught to 

 observe, to investigate, to make careful 

 inductions and to work in the true scientific 

 spirit. 



We are glad to meet you as you come to 

 us from your laboratories and various fields 

 of research, your faces aglow with the en- 

 thusiasm of investigators and discoverers, 

 to whom nature has been compelled to yield 

 up some of her choicest secrets. Tour 

 presence and companionship will stir us 

 with a new passion for truth, and when 

 you depart, we shall feel that the priests 

 of science have dwelt under our rooftree 

 and left a blessing on the gates of our 

 dwelling. 



SOME ASPECTS OF THE ENDOWMENT OF 

 RESEARCH} 



In the days of ancient Rome the return- 

 ing conqueror borne on his triumphal car 

 must listen to a slave who bade him to re- 

 member some joy-dispelling facts. 



After the lapse of many centuries the 

 Naturalists, oddly enough, revived this 

 pagan ceremony. By them each year a 

 slave is chosen who, at the next season of 



^Address at the meeting of the Society of 

 American Naturalists at Ann Arbor, December 

 28, 1905, by Henry H. Donaldson, chairman of 

 the Central Branch. 



