2 ALFRED GOLDSBOROUGH MAYOR— DAVENPORT [ ^ MOIR ^"xxt 



thence around the world. In 1898 the Fiji Islands were explored in the steamer Yaralla, and 

 finally in 1899-1900 the Albatross took Agassiz and his party, including Mayor, across the 

 tropical Pacific, visiting the Marquesas, Paumatos, Society, Cook, Nieue, Tonga, Fiji, Ellice, 

 Gilbert, Marshall, and Caroline Islands, and thence to Japan. Mr. Agassiz sent Mayor upon 

 minor expeditions ranging from the Bay of Fundy to Tortugas, Fla. 



The prolonged voyages with Agassiz naturally interfered much with his scholastic work. 

 Moreover, an inflammation of the left eye made it necessary for him to spend 1893-94 in a 

 dark room. This episode led him to avoid using the higher powers of the microscope and 

 determined to a considerable degree the character of his future researches. He made a trip 

 to France and Belgium and returned to Harvard in the autumn of 1895. He was given the 

 degree of Sc. D. by Harvard University, 1897. 



In 1895 Mayor was appointed assistant in charge of radiates in the Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology at Harvard and retained that position until 1900. In that year he was elected curator 

 of natural science in the new museum of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. He was 

 married on August 27, 1900, to Miss Harriet Randolph Hyatt, a woman of marked artistic 

 gifts, daughter of Prof. Alpheus Hyatt, and they began housekeeping in Brooklyn. Four 

 children were born to them, Alpheus Hyatt in 1901, Katherine Goldsborough in 1903, Branz 

 in 1906, and Barbara in 1910. In 1904 he was elected curator in chief of the museum, a 

 position which enabled him to make certain desirable changes in the management and policy 

 of the institution. While serving the Brooklyn museum he went on scientific expeditions to 

 Florida and the Bahamas, and dredged off the Massachusetts coast in the yacht Philopena, 

 lent for the purpose by its owner, H. B. Stearns, Esq. As curator he not only accumulated 

 collections but he inaugurated two publications: Science Bulletin and Memoirs. 



At the December, 1903, meeting of the trustees of the Carnegie Institution of Washington 

 it was decided to establish a marine laboratory upon the Tortugas Islands, Fla., and Doctor 

 Mayor, who had urged the laboratory in Science, was appointed its director. He assumed 

 this position in the summer of 1904. Mayor writes: 



A sixty-foot, ketch-rigged yacht having a 20-horsepower auxiliaiy engine was constructed at East Booth 

 Bay, Maine, during the summer of 1904, and in the meantime two large wooden portable buildings were trans- 

 ported from New York to Tortugas, and landed upon the beach at Loggerhead Key, where they were erected 

 in July, 1904, to serve as a nucleus for the establishment of the laboratory. In less than three weeks the bay 

 cedars had been cut away and the two buildings erected on Loggerhead Key, Tortugas. 



Soon after this, the yacht Physalia was completed and we sailed out from Booth Bay, Maine, late in August, 

 going slowly down the coast, making frequent surface hauls to study the medusae, siphonophores, and eteno- 

 phores. Thus we put into almost every harbor between northern Maine and Southern Florida, and arrived at 

 Miami in February, 1905. The seaworthy qualities of the yacht were well tested in a hurricane north of Cape 

 Hatteras, which she survived with only the loss of her jib, while all other .vessels within sight of us were driven 

 ashore. (A. G. M. Mss.). 



While this was the first, it was by no means the worst, storm the Physalia weathered during 

 the seven years in which she served the laboratory. In 1911, she was replaced by the twin- 

 screw, 100-horse power, 70-foot vessel Anton DoJirn, which was built at Miami, Fla.; being the 

 largest yacht that had hitherto been constructed in southern Florida. Of the work of his 

 department, Mayor states: 



It was the plan of the department to offer to well qualified investigators exceptional opportunities to pursue 

 researches for which the tropical ocean affords peculiar advantages. Thus intensive studies have been conducted 

 in the fields of physiology, ecology, heredity, evolution, animal psj'chology, variation, the geology and growth 

 of coral reefs, the bacterial precipitation of limestone in tropical seas, the chemical constitution of sea water as a 

 physiological fluid, the coloration of reef fishes in relation to environmental influences and natural selection, the 

 habits of sea gulls, memory and warning coloration in fishes, the systematic description of new and interesting 

 animals, and the ecology and physiology of plants of the region. Indeed, the major part of the researches which 

 our country has produced as a result of studies of the marine life of the ^"est Indies since the laboratory was 

 started has been performed under the auspices or with the cooperation of the department of marine biology. 



Mayor's department soon provided at the Tortugas the most thoroughly equipped marine 

 biological station in the tropical world. To this station he returned each spring, with a number 

 of investigators, and here they remained until August, when the hurricane season was apt to 

 begin. 



