A BIOLOGICAL FARM. 1 



FOR THE EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF HEREDITY, VARIA- 

 TION AND EVOLUTION AND FOR THE STUDY OF LIFE-HISTO- 

 RIES, HABITS, INSTINCTS AND INTELLIGENCE. 



c. o. WHITMAN. 



The biological laboratories of to-day, in design, equipment 

 and staff, are almost exclusively limited to the study of dead 

 material. Living organisms may find a place in small aquaria or 

 vivaria, but they are reserved, as a rule, not for study, but for 

 fresh supplies of dead material. It is no disparagement of the 

 laboratory to point out a broad limitation in its ordinary func- 

 tions and the pressing need of new facilities for observation and 

 experiment on living organisms. 



The fundamental problems of heredity, variation, adaptation 

 and evolution cannot be wholly settled in the laboratory. They 

 concern vital processes known only in living organisms proc- 

 esses which are slow and cumulative in effects, expressing them- 

 selves in development, growth, life-histories, species, habits, in- 

 stincts, intelligence. These problems require, therefore, to be 

 taken to the field, the pond, the sea, the island, where the forms 

 selected for study can be kept under natural conditions, and 

 where the work can be continued from year to year without 

 interruption. Such a field, combining land and water, and 

 stocked with animals and plants, and provided with a staff of 

 naturalists, would have the essentials of a biological farm, now 

 justly considered to be one of the great desiderata of biology. 



This great need (pointed out in all our annual programmes 

 since 1892, and named as one of the three leading purposes of 

 the Culver endowment) has been felt ever since Darwin's time, and 

 has been strongly urged by such evolutionists as Romanes, Va- 

 rigny, Gallon, Weismann and Meldola. Thus far the project 

 has not been realized, except on a small scale through individual 

 effort. 



1 Read to the Corporation of the Marine Biological Laboratory, at the annual 

 meeting, August 12, 1902. 



