No. 381.] THE CONCEPTION OF SPECIES. 677 
Probably very few of my hearers have any personal recollec- 
tion of the time when not to believe that species were fixed 
and immutable creations was enough to make one a scientific 
and almost a social outcast. I recall but a few people whom I 
knew who held these orthodox views, for it was my good for- 
tune to be a student in college at the time of the appearance of 
what was called “a new edition of the Origin of Species, revised 
and augmented by the author,” published by D. Appleton & Co. 
in 1864. By that time the novelty and audacity of Darwin’s 
views had ceased to cause a cold shudder, and certainly the 
students of my time were ready to swallow not only what Darwin 
had written, but to add a few little theories of their own. 
The young botanist of to-day will, I think, pardon me, 
although my contemporaries may not, if I give a short sketch 
of the Harvard Natural History Society in the sixties, as show- 
ing not only how changed is the position of Natural History in 
American colleges, but also the attitude of college students at 
that day toward the then new doctrine of evolution. If the 
Society soon after my college days passed out of existence, its 
end could not be said to be untimely, for the attitude not only 
of the university but of the scientific public towards the study 
of natural history had so changed that the old-fashioned Society 
had no place. Those of you who go to Cambridge next Fri- 
day may perhaps see a dreary, barn-like sort of a lecture-room 
which now occupies the greater part of old Massachusetts Hall. 
In days gone by the three upper stories of the hall served as 
dormitories, and the lower story was occupied by the rooms of 
the Natural History Society, sandwiched in between those of the 
Institute of 1770, which then was pleased to consider itself 
to be a literary society, and the laboratory of the Rumford 
Chemical Society, which, as it emitted none of the odors char- 
_acteristic of chemical activity, must be considered in my day to 
have been moribund, if not actually defunct. 
The rooms of the Natural History Society would now cause 
asmile. From the low ceiling were suspended an alligator, a 
turkey buzzard, and such other creatures as would not fit well in 
the wall cases. In one corner leaned lazily a large cup sponge, 
a receptacle for the dust which gravity constantly supplied and 
