506 LIFE HISTORY STUDIES OF ANIMALS. 



adaptive, but they may be adapted to a past rather than to a present 

 state of things ; they may be ancient, and deeply impressed upon the 

 organization of the class. 



In biology facts without thought are nothing; thought without facts 

 is nothing; thought applied to concrete facts may come to something 

 when time has sorted out what is true from what is merely plausible. 

 The reports of this association will be preserved here and there in 

 great libraries till a date when the biological speculations of 1S97 are 

 as extinct as the ptolemaic astronomy. If many years hence some 

 one should turn over the old volumes and light upon this long-forgotten 

 address, I hope that he will give me credit for having seen what was 

 coming. Except where the urgent need of brevity has for the moment 

 been too much for scientific caution I trust that he will find nothing 

 that is dogmatic or overconfident in my remarks. 



