File:Biology in America ((c1922)) (20355801986).jpg

Title: Biology in America
Identifier: biologyinamerica00youn (find matches)
Year: (c1922) ((c10s)
Authors: Young, R. T. (Robert Thompson), b. 1874
Subjects: Biology
Publisher: Boston, R. G. Badger
Contributing Library: NCSU Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: NCSU Libraries

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Early Naturalists 45 A hundred years ago the scientific thought of America was as firmly rooted in the belief in the fixity of species as was that of Europe. American colleges were almost, if not entirely, presided over by doctors of divinity, and there was even a feeling in many quarters against the sciences, especially of geology, as tending to unsettle the belief of the young in the Mosaic account of creation; and yet, even so early as 1833 there appears to have been an underlying current of unrest present in the minds of some, for in the second Amer- ican edition of "Bakewell's Geology," published in this year, under the editorship of Silliman, the lawyer, chemist and geologist, who was professor of chemistry and natural science at Yale, we read "Any attempt to disprove the truth or genuineness of the Penta- teuch, and Genesis in particular, is wholly superfluous, and quite aside from any question that can in this age be at issue between geologists. No geologist at the present day erects any system upon the basis of the scripture history." The editor however accepted the Mosaic account as true and endeavored to bring it into accordance with the geological record. In the first edition of the same work published four years earlier, Silliman con- sidered the discoveries of geology as consistent with the bH:)lical story, stating that "respecting the deluge, there can be but one opinion . . , geology fully confirms the scripture history of that event. ^" Archaic as these views appear today, they show none the less the leaven that was beginning, slowly, yet none the less surely, to work in men's minds, preparing them for the acceptance of the gospel of truth. The anti-Darwinian attitude in America was supported largely by the influence of Louis Agassiz, who, in spite of his personal friendship for Darwin, was ever his bitter opponent in the arena of science. But Darwin found an equally powerful champion in Asa Gray, the botanist, and colleague of Agassiz on the Harvard College faculty. Darwin had met Gray on a visit of tlie latter to England, some years before the i^ublication of the "Origin of Species," and in its preparation he frequently consulted ^"Merrill, "Contributions to the History of American Geology," Eep. U. S. N. M., 1904, pp. 292 and 317.
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Spencer Fullerton Baird First U. S. Fish Commissioner. Courtesy of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries. in

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