50 
IOWA ACADEMY OP SCIENCE 
But then, there are surely signs of change. Instead of lying easily content — 
as we are all, more or less inclined to do, content in the dicta of great teachers — 
the whole world is now once more alert, searching if these things be so. We no 
longer assert natural selection; we strive to make nature select before our 
eyes, and so attack the riddle of life’s kaleidoscopic panorama. The work of 
Neilson, De Vries, and even Burbank, discredited as he may be by the peripatetic 
theorizer — the work of such men is full of suggestion for the richness of future 
botanical science. Argument shall at length become recessive, and dominant 
shall be the experimental search for truth; so that when in another twenty- 
five years many of the members of this Academy now sitting before us, shall 
again gather here to celebrate the full half-century of our story, the list of 
published articles may not be longer, but their content shall have helped, at 
least, to change for intellectual humanity, the face of nature; spring shall return 
with a newer bloom; the flowers shall shine with an added lustre; new forms^ 
and varieties shall adorn our parks and forests; the fungi still shall weave 
their web of intricacy, but under guidance of man acting in presence of ascer- 
tained fact, shall contribute their exhaustless energy to the promotion of utility 
and beauty; and botany shall begin to show itself, as it really is, the most 
fascinating, productive, beautiful, and withal, instructive science of this world. 
