Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/211

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THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE
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which may be regarded as accidental, leading to this voyage. When we remember that his contemporaries, Huxley, Wallace and Hooker, were also led to their scientific work by a voyage of exploration, we must regard it as more than a mere incident in their lives.

It is truly remarkable that Christ's College, smaller than the average of our six hundred colleges and with no higher standards as far as the requirements of the curriculum go, can celebrate the tercentenary of the birth of Milton as well as the centenary of the birth of Darwin; that Tennyson and Darwin should have been fellow students, and that Newton, perhaps Darwin's only rival for scientific preeminence, should have been a member of the same university. Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus, was also a Cambridge student, and three of his sons are intimately connected with the university. Cambridge may well be proud of its great men and England of its great university; and this feeling we may share, remembering the descent of our academic institutions from the new Cambridge in New England.

An English university is certainly the place where a ceremonial such as the Darwin centenary has the most fit setting. To it came delegates from all parts of the world, some 230 in number, leaders in all departments of science and especially in the biological and evolutionary sciences. Lord Rayleigh, formerly professor of physics and now chancellor of the university, welcomed the guests to the Fitzwilliam Museum on the evening of June 22. On the 'following day, there was a presentation of addresses by the delegates in the Senate House. After the address of the chancellor speeches were made by Professor Oscar Hertwig, of Berlin; Professor Elié Metchnikoff, of Paris; Dr. Henry F. Osborn, of New York, and Sir E. Ray Lankester, of London. In concluding his remarks Dr. Osborn said that they, the delegates, naturalists and friends, desired to present to I Christ's College, as a memorial of their j visit, a portrait of Charles Darwin in bronze, the work of their countryman, William Couper, "a portrait which they trusted would convey to this and future generations of Cambridge students, some impression of the rugged simplicity as well as of the intellectual grandeur of the man they revered and honored."

On Wednesday evening the delegates and guests were entertained at a banquet held in the New Examination Hall, which was used for the first time for a public purpose. Among the speakers were the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, Dr. Svante Arrhenius, Professor E. B. Poulton and Mr. William Erasmus Darwin, eldest son of Charles Darwin. On Thursday, the Rede lecture was given by Sir Archibald Geikie, president of the Royal Society, and honorary degrees were conferred on a number of delegates, including from America Professor Jacques Loeb, of the University of California; Secretary Charles D. Walcott, of the Smithsonian Institution and Professor Edmund B. Wilson, of Columbia University. During the celebration there was an exhibition held in Christ's College of pictures, books, manuscripts and other objects connected with Darwin, ineluding the portraits by Richmand, Collier and Ouless, and the bronze bust by William Couper, of New York, I which the American delegates presented to Christ's College.

THE WINNIPEG MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION

The British Association for the AdvanCement of Science takes seriously its imperial functions. Four years ago it migrated to South Africa, and now. for the third time, it is about to hold a Canadian meeting and in the very center of the great dominion. The British Association has maintained its usefulness and prestige along the lines in which it was originally established. It is a great factor in the diffusion as well as in the advancement of science.