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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



August Dohrn, his first two papers, published in his eighteenth year, 

 •were upon Hemiptera. Until 1881 his work was mostly concerned 

 with the insects and other arthropods including his monograph on the 

 Pantopoda for the Fauna and Flora of the Bay of Naples. However, 

 as early as 1876, appeared the first of Dohrn's brilliant and suggestive 

 papers on the origin of the vertebrates. "Working upon the basis of 

 embryologieal studies in such forms as the Aseidians, Amphioxus, the 



The Zoological Station feom the East. 



Cyclostomes, sharks, bony-fishes, and other vertebrates, Dohrn traced 

 the phylogeny of the vertebrates to the annelid worms. Beyond their 

 theoretical bearing upon a question still debatable, his discoveries con- 

 stitute substantial additions to comparative anatomy and embryology. 

 The investigators at the station find intellectual and esthetic en- 

 joyment in historic Naples and its neighborhood. Among the marbles 

 and bronzes of the National Museum one finds such masterpieces as 

 the Hera Farnese and the Narcissus. In Pompeii the uncovered 

 auditorium and the uncurtained stage of the great theater seem to voice 

 the awful tragedy of 79 in spite of the roses and larkspurs blooming 



