REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR I()l6 99 



at progress through any other agency than the independent indi- 

 vidual. This is so important a conclusion to every state taking 

 cognizance of its dependence on natural laws that it is highly essen- 

 tial to consider nature's own alternatives to such individualistic 

 effort, her own experiments in trying out other modes of ascending 

 heavenward. For " individual liberty," said President Butler 

 speaking before the Constitutional Convention of this State, " is the 

 cornerstone of the free state." That is the decree which is written 

 in burning letters on every milepost of the course of life. " The 

 perfection of the individual is the perfection of the race " says Pro- 

 fessor Hoffman. " But," he adds, writing on the organization of the 

 state, " the individual can have no rights or duties that conflict with 

 the good of the whole " — a supplement for which it is exceedingly 

 doubtful that any substantiation can be found in nature. 



a It has been my environmental control to study and, I hope, to 

 learn some of the lessons of life from their simplest and most 

 easily legible expressions — a result that has come from living and 

 laboring in a state built from the early waters with their undifferen- 

 tiated expressions of life. The panorama of successive early worlds 

 of life glows with the simple expressions of law which become more 

 involved, supplemented and beclouded as the passing of the ages 

 complicates the process of higher evolution, and produces expres- 

 sions which, in terms of existing life alone, would be difficultly in- 

 telligible. The study of the meaning of existing life without the 

 light of its vast history leads nowhere. 



It is safe to say, I think, that living beings at the start, animated 

 nature whatever its composition, had an equal chance for progress 

 and improvement. How soon that chance became forfeit we can 

 not say, but it is obvious that life was not long begun and its greater 

 stocks established when their courses throughout existence were 

 set and determined. Nothing is more obvious in chronology than 

 nature's deliberate failures, nothing more clear in paleontology than 

 her set purposes. 



The vast subkingdom of the Mollusca started well with bodily 

 independence, fully equipped with locomotive powers, an excellent 

 innervation, but they sold their birthright for ease and content. 

 They soon became dependent upon the movements of the waters 

 and waited for the waves to bring them food. Compact in their 

 protection and adaptation, these types of life have come crowding 

 down through the ages in inexpressible variety. They and their 

 allied phyla in the great subkingdom to which they belong have, it 



