THE MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY. 605 



The village itself is absolutely without business, except the 

 daily shipment of fresh fish to the Boston and New York markets. 

 In years long gone by, like the neighboring seaports, it was in- 

 terested in the whale fisheries, and a recollection of those oily 

 days still remains in the old stone candle factory where the 

 spermaceti was made into wax candles. Later the Pacific Guano 

 Company established here its extensive works, to which the 

 phosphate rock of the Carolina rivers was brought, pulverized, 

 treated with sulphuric acid, and converted into fertilizers for the 

 farmer. But a few years ago the company failed, and the prop- 

 erty has all been sold. 



The United States has considerable interests here. There is 

 the lighthouse wharf, where the supplies for the whole district 

 are kept. To this wharf every buoy and channel-mark is brought 

 each year to receive its coat of preservative copper paint ; and 

 here is almost always to be seen a reserve light-ship to replace 

 any that may be injured upon the many adjacent shoals. The 

 revenue marine has also its wharf here, where its steamers obtain 

 their supplies of coal and the like. Here, too, is the place where 

 one leaves the dusty cars of the Old Colony Railway for the cool 

 and comfortable steamers for Cottage City and Nantucket. Not 

 these, however, but rather the scientific aspects of the place, in- 

 terest us at present. 



There is no place like the sea-shore for the student of natural 

 history. On the one hand, we can turn to the fields and streams, 

 and find there essentially the same animals and plants which 

 occur a hundred miles inland ; on the other, we have the won- 

 drous wealth of life of the ocean, so rich as to almost surpass 

 belief. This richness is of two kinds : First, there is the wealth 

 of numbers, a wealth which is far beyond that of any fresh-water 

 expanse ; and, second, the astonishing variety of forms. Whole 

 groups of animals are abundant in the ocean which are absolutely 

 without representatives in our rivers and lakes. Sea anemones 

 and corals, star-fishes and sea-urchins are wholly unknown in 

 fresh water, while thousands of other marine forms have but a 

 few insignificant representatives in ponds and streams. 



Nor is this richness either of forms or of individuals the only 

 advantage the sea offers the student. The marine animals often 

 have a greatly different history from their fresh-water relatives. 

 One of the most important studies of the modern naturalist is 

 that which traces every phase of growth of an animal from the 

 time the egg is laid until the adult condition is reached. It is 

 hardly necessary to say that the theory of evolution is no longer 

 a question for discussion with him. He accepts the principle and 

 makes it the key-note of all his investigations. He is now trying 

 to ascertain the various lines of descent, rather than to test the 



