LIFE IN A SEASIDE SUMMER SCHOOL. 



85 



the study of the seaweeds, and the chaperon, a cheery old lady, the 

 mother of the sub-director. I look into the big room in the living 

 house and note the great fire-place with a big settee on each side, 

 which promises solid comfort in the cool evenings. 



With the director I go to the laboratories, where we find three 

 rooms, in all of which students are hard at work. Here are tables, 

 microscopes, reagents, books and other laboratory apparatus, and the 

 rooms look much like the laboratories in the colleges and universi- 

 ties, except that here the furni- 

 ture is roughly made by carpenters. 

 We go down to the beach and take 

 a close view of the seaweeds, the 

 hermit crabs, sea anemones and 

 star fishes. We look up and note 

 the gigantic size of the trees which 

 form the forest background. We 

 hear the clangor of a bell, and 

 the director suggests that we hurry 

 back to camp, for that is the noon- 

 day dinner signal. He takes us 

 by the men's ' lavatory,' which is 

 a quiet brook near one of the 

 laboratories. Towels and soap are 

 here in profusion, for every man 



supplies his own. Here, day by day. the men perform their ablutions 

 and make their toilets. The water is always abundant and the toilet 

 room is never overcrowded ! 



The dinner served in the big room was quite characteristic of our 

 camp life. On each side of two long tables were long plain benches. 

 Over these we stepped to our assigned places. Potatoes, turnips and 

 bacon, with bread, butter and tea, all in generous quantities, con- 

 stituted the substantial meal. It was a merry meal, as were all our 

 meals. When twenty-two hungry campers sit down to a ' square 

 meal ' there is always much jollity. Dinner over, the noonday lecture 

 was announced to take place in a shady spot two hundred yards from 

 the camp. It was given by the director, who sat on a log, and talked 

 to us on the characteristics of the spruce, hemlock and fir trees of the 

 region, while his audience sat on other logs or on the ground near 

 him. Above us are the trees under discussion, and at our feet are 

 the cones which have fallen from them. So we have a bit of out-door 

 laboratory work while listening to the lecture. When we break up, 

 some go to the laboratories, while others stroll over the rocks hunting 

 for specimens. 



A Vancouver Coast Octopus. 



