Bis Lis 
1878. | Scientific News. 199 
power of natural science, to praise and thank its votaries, and to 
dedicate this splendid structure to its service. The power to 
which we do homage is the accumulated intelligence of our race 
applied, generation after generation, to the study of nature, and 
this palace is the storehouse of the elaborated materials which 
that intelligence has garnered, ordered and illuminated. What 
has natural science done for mankind that it should be thus hon-. 
ored? Natural science has engendered a peculiar kind of human ~ 
mind. The searching, open, humble mind, which, knowing that 
it cannot attain unto all truth, or even to much new truth, is yet 
patiently and enthusiastically devoted to the pursuit of such little 
new truth as is within its grasp, having no other end than to 
learn, prizing, above all things, accuracy, thoroughness and candor 
in research, proud and happy, not in its own strength, but in the 
might of that host of students whose past conquests make up the 
wondrous sum of present knowledge, whose sure future triumphs 
each humblest worker in imagination shares. It has been reserved 
for natural science in this generation to demonstrate the univer- 
sality of hereditary transmission and its controlling influence upon. 
the families, nations and races of men, as well as upon all lower 
orders of animate beings. It is fitting that natural history should 
have given this demonstration to the world, for the basis of sys- 
tematic natural history is the idea of species, and the idea of 
Species is itself founded upon the sureness of hereditary transmis- 
sion upon the ultimate fact that individual characteristics are he- 
reditable. As the knowledge of heredity recently acquired by 
science permeates society it will profoundly affect social customs, 
public legislation and governmental action. It will throw addi- 
tional safeguards around the domestic relations, enhance the natu- 
ral interest in vigorous family stocks, guide wisely the charitable 
action of the community, give a rational basis for penal legisla- 
tion, and promote both the occasional production of illustrious 
men and the gradual improvement of the masses of mankind. 
These moral benefits will surely flow from our generation's study 
of heredity. Modern science has exalted the idea of God, the 
greatest service which can be rendered to humanity.” After 
Prof. Marsh, President of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science, had delivered a brief address, President 
I now perform the honorable but brief and simple duty assigned 
to me at the opening of this enterprise, so noble, so valuable and 
so splendid, which the country owes to the enlightened liberty of 
the city and the citizens of New York. And I now declare that 
the opening ceremonies have been completed ; that the American 
Museum of Natural History is now open. 
The building has been built by the city of New York, while 
_ the fine collections in it have been purchased by private subscrip- 
