THE IIARPSWELL LABORATORY 505 



THE HAEPSWELL LABORATORY 



By max morse 



the college of the city of new york 



Whether one is sailing about upon tlie sunny sea, fishing with muslin 

 nets for the surface fauna, or steaming away far from shore to dredge for other 

 material, or, again, carrying on observations in the cool sea water tanks and 

 bell-jars of a neat little wooden workshop thrown open to the sea-breezes, it 

 alike requires some effort to persuade one's self that the occupation is really 

 something more than that of finding amusement. — Romanes, " Jellyfishes, Star- 

 fishes and Seaurchins." 



ROMANES was thinking of Cromarty Firth when he drew this 

 beautiful vignette. One may equally well think of the " little 

 wooden workshop " founded by John Sterling Kingsley on Casco Bay. 



As it stands at present^ the laboratory is a one-story, wooden build- 

 ing, 24 by 43 feet on the ground, with sixteen windows looking out 

 directly on a rugged shore, where the long ground swells from open 

 water break incessantly. The building, within, is divided up into nine 

 small rooms for investigators, and one large room, which is fitted up 

 with five tables, for other workers, as occasion demands. A portion of 

 this space is given over to shelving for the nucleus of a library made 

 up mainly of books from the private library of Dr. Kingsley and re- 

 prints given to the laboratory by various students. Arrangement is 

 made whereby the current journals are placed on file, during the season, 

 and back numbers may be obtained for the asking, either from Tufts 

 College or from the Boston Society of Natural History. At either end 

 of the laboratory are double doors and when these are " thrown open to 

 the sea breezes " an ideal temperature is assured, even on the warmest 

 days. There have been but few days for many years when the ther- 

 mometer in the laboratory registered above 78° F. 



The equipment of the laboratory, modest as it is, lias been found 

 adequate for the purposes. Whenever special apparatus has been called 

 for it has been supplied without delay, either from Portland, which is 

 within an hour and one-half by the line of steamers running down the 

 bay, or from Boston, which may be reached within tliree hours. Micro- 

 tomes, glassware and the commoner laboratory materials are brought 

 at the beginning of the season from the zoological laboratory of Tufts 

 College. Investigators, even in our larger laboratories, prefer to take 

 with them their more special apparatus, and such workers have been 

 requested to do so when applying for space at the Harpswell station. 



