IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
5 
RESOLUTIONS ON DARWIN. 
It is fitting that the Iowa Academy of Science should, in some way, spread 
on the minutes of its proceedings, its estimate of what science owes to the 
work of Charles Darwin; the centenary ■ of whose birth occurred on the 12th 
of February, 1909. 
Darwin’s contribution to science was two-fold; in the first place it consisted 
of additions, the result of research, additions made directly to the body of the 
knowledge of his time; secondly, it consisted in a singular impulse to natural 
history study, an impulse destined to be long-lasting as science itself. 
He possessed that singular breadth of mind and view that enabled him 
to look upon all nature as one; at least in the fascinating interest attaching 
to her wondrous operations; but in this very comprehensiveness, his mind 
became possessed at last by one idea, a universality, diflicult for some men yet 
to understand. He turned from one department of the natural world to another 
with an eagerness and apprehension absolutely impartial. To him all things 
were plastic. The world-shaping coral reefs rested not, but were by him asso- 
ciated with the phenomena of life; the barnacles or cirripeds were interesting 
to him not in themselves alone, but because of their wonderful departure from 
the habits of all their kin in adaptations almost unparalleled. All familiar 
domestic plants and animals charmed him by their pliancy, their obedience to 
the will of man; until at last there rose upon his vision the movement of the 
whole living world, the absolute rhythm with which all living things keep 
step to the changes of time and chance. Even the continents and islands, rising 
and dipping light on the waters, proclaim obedience to the self-same laws 
which guide the thistle-down in its airy flight across the sun-lit fields, or poise 
the humming bird in gauzy equilibrium before a summer flower. When he 
reached that view, geology, zoology, botany, lost their boundaries while the 
child of nature followed everywhere one shining silken clue which bound for 
him all things present and all things past in one unfailing and unbroken 
series. 
We are, accordingly, not surprised at the themes of Darwins books; the 
Volcanic Island, the Fossil Cirripeds, the Geology of South America, the Birds 
and Plants of the Galapagos, Domesticated Plants and Animals, the Origin of 
Species, the Fertilization of Orchids, Twining Plants. Even at the last, the 
insignificant earthworm became his theme; in the unrivalled comprehensive- 
ness of his scheme and vision, there is nothing great of earth, in Nature, noth- 
ing small. 
The men of this quiet day have small suspicion of the intellectual ferment 
of fifty years ago. The commercial excitement of these times does not com- 
pare with it. Had Darwin by some magic touch kindled a flame on the floor 
of every college, of every lecture-room, of every school house, of every church, 
in Chri^stendom he had not excited greater astonishment or more vigorous and 
wide-spread disputation. 
As early as March, 1860, Asa Gray, the foremost botanist of this country, 
was constrained to come to the defense of the author of the origin of species, 
his old-time correspondent and friend, by a series of papers which should allay 
the excitement of the country and the resentment of men who could not at all 
understand the position of the greatest naturalist among the sons of men. 
