1897] A CALIFORNIAN MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION 33 



The boats go out with nets and red pine fires, which are hung cresset- 

 wise over the sides of the boats to lure the squid. Some of these are 

 intended to be cleaned and dried on latticed trays as a staple article 

 of diet in Chinese markets. The bulk of the catch is, however, 

 spread over the fields for drying, then to be packed in matting bags 

 for export to China, as a rich fertilizer for the rice fields. Another 

 phase of their industry is that of collecting abalones, Haliotis, these 

 also to be dried for export. The people have their usual Oriental 

 thrift, — they are infamous at a bargain, but make up this deficiency 

 by the skill with which they separate the fertile or unfertile eggs of 

 sharks or Bdcllostoma, and recognise what they refer to as the ' hen ' 

 or ' rooster ' sharks or rat-fish {Chimaera). 



There is also another little imported village in this neighbour- 

 hood, nearer Monterey, namely, a settlement of Portuguese, who, 

 like the Chinese, have retained minutely their foreign ways. Their 

 boats are precisely those one would see in the Tagus, and, judging 

 from the writer's experience in Portugal, he believes that the 

 immigrants have not improved in the way of zoological collectors. 



The laboratory has now completed its fifth season, and the work 

 of last year seems to have been carried on very much in the lines 

 of former years. There is a class in the dissection of types, and in 

 the study of methods, limited to twenty or thirty students, each 

 paying a stated fee for a term of six weeks. A second class includes 

 advanced students in zoology, mainly from Palo Alto. The investi- 

 gators, finally to be mentioned, occupy the private rooms in both 

 buildings. These are afforded their quarters, reagents, and collect- 

 ing facilities gratuitously. Class instruction is carried on by the pro- 

 fessors of the Stanford University, during the present year by 

 Doctors Jenkins, Shaw, and Wilbur. Among the investigators of 

 the past summer were W. R. Shaw, working on the development 

 of conifers, E. P. Wheeler, on the embryology of Dicyema and on 

 diptera, D. A. Saunders, on the brown seaweeds, H. Heath, on the 

 anatomy and development of Chiton, 0. P. Jenkins, on contractility 

 of muscles and conductivity of nerve-tissues in invertebrates, H. P. 

 Johnson, on the annelids, and W. E. Ritter, on the ascidians, W. 

 A. Setchell, on (laminarian) seaweeds, and the present writer, on the 

 development of Chimaera and Bdcllostoma. Many of these investi- 

 gators have previously spent summers at the laboratory. Among the 

 workers of former seasons might be mentioned H. Ayers, whose 

 lecture on Bdellostoma, published in the volume of zoological 

 lectures of Wood's Holl Laboratory (1893), has merited wide atten- 

 tion. Dr C. H. Gilbert, as the director of the station jointly with 

 Dr Jenkins, has also been a constant visitor, and has here prepared 

 no little part of his studies on the ichthyology of the Pacific. Dr 

 E. C. Price, also one of the zoological staff at Palo Alto, was the 



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