6 i 4 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lars, for the season. These fees fall far short of paying the actual 

 running expenses, and yet every outgo is reduced as far as is com- 

 patible with first-class results. So every year the trustees have 

 the problem of meeting the deficiency. So far it has been suc- 

 cessfully solved, but it means a continuous struggle. Various 

 plans have been suggested ; the most promising is the following : 

 That different colleges and universities endow the private rooms 

 with a hundred dollars a year, and by virtue of this payment 

 have the right to nominate the annual occupant. 



Such in outline is the Marine Biological Laboratory as it exists 

 to-day ; but it is far from being the institution that its friends 



Fig. 4. A Private Eoom, Marine Biological Laboratory. 



wish it to be. It has developed about as far as possible in the 

 line of a school of instruction, but as a center of investigation 

 there is a chance for enormous growth, and for development in 

 that direction the plans are already well thought out, but as yet 

 the necessary money is lacking. 



Only a few years ago, when the student wished to investigate 

 marine life, he must take his laboratory with him and depend for 

 quarters upon a room in a fish-house or the like near the shore. 

 That was the way in which Johannes Muller worked in Europe, 

 and the way in which Agassiz studied on our own coast. Some 

 fifteen or twenty years ago the change began, and sea-side labora- 

 tories were erected. The best known of these to-day is the cele- 

 brated Zoological Station at Naples, established by Dr. Dohrn, to 

 which students flock from every quarter of the world. In its 



