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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 835 



that there is a G-egenbaur School of Mor- 

 phology. This school was not the univer- 

 sity, but Gegenbaur himself. We ought to 

 have more such schools in America, schools 

 of advanced thinkers gathered around a 

 man they love, and from whose methods 

 and enthusiasm the young men go away to 

 be centers of like enthusiasm for others. I 

 believe that our system of university fel- 

 lowships is a powerful agency in breaking 

 up this condition. If, by chance, it were 

 possible for us to produce a Darwin, the 

 raw material furnished, it would be a diffi- 

 cult task if a fellowship of $500 has drawn 

 him to the laboratory of some lesser plod- 

 der, preventing him forever from being 

 "the man that walked with Henslow." 

 The fellowship system keeps our graduate 

 courses running regardless of whether 

 these courses have anything to give. So 

 long as our fellows are hired to take de- 

 grees, then sent out to starve as instructors, 

 so long will we find our output unworthy 

 of our apparent advantages. And in our 

 sober moments we will say with Osborn, we 

 do not see how an American university 

 could produce a Darwin. And at the same 

 time, professors in universities in other 

 lands will admit that the machinery for 

 mediocrity offers little promise to the great. 

 Jacques Loeb tells the story of a young 

 man who applied through him for a fellow- 

 ship in physiology at Chicago. His ad- 

 miration for Loeb 's wonderful genius as an 

 experimenter and as an original worker on 

 the borderland of life and matter led him 

 to wish to work with Loeb above all other 

 things. Loeb wrote back that he had re- 

 signed his chair in the University of Chi- 

 cago to go to the University of California. 

 Then, said the candidate, ' ' will you kindly 

 turn over my application for a fellowship 

 to your successor at the University of Chi- 

 cago?" This single case is typical of the 

 attitude into which our fellowship system 



as it is now administered throws the young 

 digs who arise in our various colleges. The 

 embryo professor asks for his training not 

 the man of genius who will make him over 

 after his kind, but the university which 

 will pay his expenses while he goes on to 

 qualify for an instructor's position. By 

 this and other means we are filling the 

 ranks of our teaching force, not with en- 

 thusiasts either for teaching or for re- 

 search, but with docile, mechanical men, 

 who do their work fairly, but with few 

 touches of the individuality without which 

 no Darwins nor Darwinoids can ever be 

 produced. It is a proverb at Harvard, I 

 am told, that "the worm will turn, and he 

 turns into a graduate student. ' ' 



Thirty-eight years ago it was my fortune 

 as a beginner in science to attend the meet- 

 ing of this association at Dubuque. The 

 very contact with men of science, which 

 this meeting gave, was a wealth of inspira- 

 tion. To hear these men speak, to touch 

 their hands, to meet them on the street, to 

 ride with them to the fossil-bearing rocks, 

 or the flower-carpeted prairie, for the 

 moment at least to be counted of their 

 number, all these meant wonderful things. 



Of these men, let me speak primarily of 

 the students of natural history, for then, 

 and even yet, I know little of anything else. 

 They were naturalists "of the old school," 

 these workers of the early seventies. 

 Louis Agassiz, dean of them all, was not at 

 Dubuque, but I came to know him very 

 soon after. There was Asa Gray. I heard 

 at Dubuque some Harvard man say, 

 "There goes Asa Gray. If he should say 

 black was white, I should see it looking 

 whitish." There was Shaler, the many- 

 sided, every side altogether charming; and 

 Spencer F. Baird, the father of coopera- 

 tive science, the science at the Capitol at 

 Washington. There was Fred Putnam, the 

 ever-present veteran, a veteran even in his 



