10 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Not for an instant has the attitude of the chief educational 

 officer, judicially reflecting the underlying sentiment of the 

 State, intimated a purpose to restrain or curtail investigations 

 in those lines of pure and applied science here carried on; on the 

 contrary this influence has substantially favored and apprecia- 

 tively encouraged all this work, in geology, paleontology, miner- 

 alogy, botany, entomology, zoology and archeology; the proper 

 fields of science which this division covers. Such indeed has 

 been the historic attitude of the State toward this work and 

 such without question it is likely to be. 



This Division of Science, during its long existence of seventy- 

 five years, has rolled up a monumental record of the varied 

 scientific resources of the State, embodying facts and factors 

 which have modified and added to the total body of science in 

 ways that it would now be difficult to estimate. The State ot 

 New York has become classic ground of these scientific branches 

 and its fund of records is in keeping with the vastness of its 

 natural wealth. There could be no justification for any cessa- 

 tion in these activities, whether they pertain to pure or to applied 

 science. The mining production of this State has increased by 

 3000 per cent since the inception of the Geological Survey. 

 The control of insect depredations upon the agricultural and 

 forest crops of the State becomes annually of greater moment to 

 the people with the yearly enlargement of the crops themselves. 

 The conservation of all our native fauna and flora is a problem 

 of growing concern. 



These are but items in the progress of results, but it may be 

 said with security that never in its history has this division been 

 of more immediate usefulness to the progress of the people nor 

 its contributions in pure science of more moment to the philos- 

 ophy of life. The solution of every problem of science brings 

 with it new and larger problems. The bell never rings on 

 scientific progress and research — if it does, in a State like this, 

 it is a knell that tolls for death and decay. There lie before us 

 today in these various fields of research larger problems, more 

 deeply fraught with the welfare of the Commonwealth, more 

 intimately concerned with the inspiration and uplift of the 

 citizen, than there have ever been. 



But in an evident and pregnant sense we have now come to 

 a turn in the road. This division is, and has long and properly 

 been, a part in the University of the State and the Department 



