606 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



truth of the theory. One of the laws of evolution is that animals, 

 in their growth from the egg to the adult, pass through condi- 

 tions which represent, more or less clearly, the different stages 

 through which the line of descent has come. Thus, the existence 

 of rudimentary gills, with the cartilages and blood-vessels proper 

 to gills, in the human embryo, is taken as an indication that at 

 one time the ancestor had gills which were functional in other 

 words, that man has descended from a fish-like form. There are, 

 however, great differences in the completeness with which this 

 record of ancestral history has been preserved. Speaking gen- 

 erally, more features have been dropped by the fresh-water and 

 terrestrial forms than by those of the sea. In the latter there 

 frequently hatches from the egg a larva which bears not the 

 slightest resemblance to the adult: the young sea-urchin shows 

 not a feature of the spiny creature we find in the holes in the 

 rocks ; and these changes metamorphoses they are called are 

 fraught with interest and instruction to the student who goes 

 deeper than ascertaining the mere name of the form he collects. 

 So we can see that, if the ocean offer such advantages, a labora- 

 tory for the study of Nature should be on the shore. 



Not all places on the coast are equally suitable for study. At 

 one there is nothing but sand ; another has rocks and no sand or 

 mud ; a third has the water vitiated by the mouth of some river 

 constantly pouring in fresh water, which makes the neighboring 

 ocean brackish ; a fourth is contaminated by the sewage of a large 

 city. All these conditions conspire to make the region poor in 

 life. The proper place for our studies must have rocky points ; 

 stretches of mud and sand exposed at low tide ; currents to bring 

 constantly the pure water of the sea ; and such localities are not 

 abundant. It was over twenty years ago that the late Professor 

 Spencer F. Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution, recognized the 

 advantages of Woods Holl, not only for the investigation of the 

 problems of pure science, but for the study of the many questions 

 of more economic importance connected with the supply of food- 

 fishes of the country. So, year after year, he and his assistants 

 came here and worked through the summer months. Some made 

 studies of the fish of the region ; others collected the other forms 

 of life, for among these we must seek the food of the fishes ; still 

 others traced the life-histories of the injurious as well as of the 

 valuable forms ; while still others worked at the problems of arti- 

 ficial hatching and the like. As the work went on it outgrew the 

 limited quarters afforded by the barn-like building on the light- 

 house wharf, and so Congress granted the money for the present 

 buildings, the finest for their purposes of any in the world. 



These buildings were completed shortly before the death of 

 Professor Baird. On the one side is the Dormitory and Mess Hall, 



