HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



251 



seriously ill, expecting to die, and was induced to 

 try the experiment of changing his customary flesh 

 meat diet. To use his own words, he has no 

 "vegetarian fad," but found such immense benefit 

 from the change that he is actively working to induce 

 others to follow his example. He rises at 6 a.m., 

 goes to the city, does a day's work there and takes 

 long walks for recreation. He walked nearly two 

 miles to call upon me, and back again, without 

 fatigue, and his appearance verifies his statements of 

 vigour, both of mind and body. 



THE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY AT 

 PLYMOUTH. 



THE appearance of the second number of the 

 Journal of the "Marine Biological Association 

 of the Uuited Kingdom," which, it will be re- 

 membered, was founded in order to organise a series 

 of stations for the pursuit of biology, affords us a 

 pleasant and practicable pretext for reviewing the 

 work of this association up to the present, and of 

 giving some account of their laboratory at Plymouth 

 formally opened on June 30th last. 



The extraordinary lack of anything like a scientific 

 knowledge of the life-histories, habits, and food stuffs 

 of our important food fishes was amply demonstrated 

 at the various congresses held in connection with the 

 London Fisheries Exhibition of 1884. This bore 

 fruit, after many days, in the formation of the associa- 

 tion whose Journal now lies before us. 



In a paper read before the Society of Arts in the 

 year 1885, Professor E. Ray Lankester gave an 

 authoritative statement of the aims of the proposed 

 association, together with a short sketch of the work 

 done by similar bodies up to that time. He drew 

 attention to the fact that the French, Norwegians, 

 and more especially the Americans, had made attempts 

 to regulate their sea fisheries on rational principles, 

 to understand and control, for the advantage of their 

 race, the operations of nature, rather than leave them 

 to the unknown development of physical causes. On 

 the other hand, although our fisheries are of immense 

 importance to us, we had made little or no endeavour 

 to obtain an accurate scientific knowledge of the 

 conditions most favourable to their development. 

 Our ignorance on the subject of fish and fishing is 

 appalling — we do not know, for instance, why soles 

 are getting scarcer every year, nor why great shoals 

 of fish appear at certain seasons at certain spots, or 

 cease to so appear. We are also completely ignorant 

 of the possibilities of artificial rearing, and stocking 

 of the fishing grounds, or of cultivating favourite 

 foods in order to favour the increase of the fish. To 

 provide facilities for acquiring such knowledge the 

 association determined to found a series of labora- 

 tories at various stations, each provided with boats 

 and fishermen, and having within its walls tanks for 



hatching eggs, and watching fish, and conveniences 

 for trained naturalists and biologists. 



The first of these is now a visible entity in the form 

 of the handsome building on Plymouth Hoe, and of 

 which we propose to give some account. 



Most of our readers know Plymouth Sound, a 

 somewhat triangular inlet of the sea, protected from 

 southerly gales by a magnificent breakwater which 

 spans the mouth. Along its most inward shore, 

 about two miles from the breakwater, stretches the 

 town of Plymouth, a line of light grey houses cresting 

 the cliffs. The Sound is everywhere bounded by 

 cliffs, which on the western side are more sloping and 

 exhibit the delightful green lanes and close set clumps 

 of trees of Edgcumbe Park. 



Between the town and the Sound is the historic 

 cliff top, known as the Hoe, and on the eastward part 

 of this, just below the old citadel of Charles II.'s 

 time, is situated the laboratory. A rare place for 

 work in the bright summer days, with the panorama 

 of the Sound spread below, a blue sheet of water with 

 swift shadows of cloud coursing over it, and its 

 surface dotted with craft of all kinds from the hand- 

 some old training brigs, relics of the wooden walls of 

 past days, to grim, modern armour-clads and stately 

 Australian liners. The room too in which the 

 naturalists work is always musical with the plod of 

 the water in the tanks and redolent of the sea. 



The building is of local marble, light grey in 

 colour, and offers a long front to the sea, flanked at 

 either end with square projecting blocks. The 

 central portion connecting the terminal blocks, is 

 two stories, and each story forms one long room of 

 which the lower is the large aquarium, while the 

 upper forms the general working room of the 

 naturalists. Of the two terminal blocks, that to the 

 east is entirely taken up by the residence of the 

 director, while that to the west — the central con- 

 necting part, is given up to the work of the institution. 

 In addition to the two long central rooms above 

 mentioned, there is a chemical room, where the 

 necessary reagents are stored ; opposite to this is a 

 room devoted to physiological research, in which are 

 also large cases with glass fronts intended for the 

 display of the reference collection. These two, 

 together with a small room for photographic pur- 

 poses, occupy the second floor ; above them is the 

 library, which already has on its shelves a fair collec- 

 tion of reference books and periodicals. 



The large airy room which forms the work-place of 

 the naturalists is beautifully fitted up, and pleases all 

 with the admirable completeness of its arrangements. 

 Down the centre run a double row of tanks, twelve 

 in all. Each is of slate, with a plate glass front, aid 

 is about four feet long, by three wide and two deep. 

 Into each a couple series of jets of sea- water are con- 

 tinually playing with considerable force, giving com- 

 plete aeration with constant renewal. The north side 

 is divided off into six spacious cubicles, each of which 



