THE HARVARD LABORATORY OF ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY 181 



trollable and reasonably controlled conditions is in question, 

 the laboratory, with its instrumental equipment, is excellent. 

 But in addition to the ever present need of the development of 

 new methods and the opportunity for the advantageous in- 

 stallation of new apparatus, the writer has felt as a still more 

 urgent and important need, the supplementation of the laboratory 

 by facilities for field work. 



It would appear to be self-evident, yet the attitude of many 

 experimental students of animal behavior seems to contradict 

 the statement, that every student of animal life should be 

 familiar with the objects of his interest in nature as well as in 

 the laboratory; that he should possess, as a basis for evaluating 

 the results of experiments, intimate knowledge of the instincts, 

 habits, temperaments, and habitat of whatever type of organism 

 he happens to be using for experimental purposes. The writer 

 is fully convinced that naturalistic observation, or field work, 

 should be held alike by naturalists and experimentalists as of 

 equal importance with experimental observation, and should 

 be regarded as an indispensable supplement to the latter. There 

 are naturalists, to be sure, who decry all observation of animal 

 behavior made under experimental conditions, whether within 

 or without the walls of a laboratory, and there are experimental- 

 ists who deny the value of naturalistic work, or ignore it. But 

 surely the last decade has furnished abundant proof of the unprofit- 

 ableness of these attitudes. We propose, so far as is possible, 

 in connection with our laboratory studies of animal behavior, to 

 attempt to unite the naturalistic and the experimental points 

 of view and methods. 



The Harvard Psychological Laboratory is particularly for- 

 tunate in having the use of a field station in Franklin, New 

 Hampshire, at which naturalistic studies on any organism 

 which will thrive in a temperate climate may be pursued. This 

 station consists of a tract of about one hundred and fifty acres of 

 hill land, of which about half is wooded. The elevation is fourteen 

 to fifteen hundred feet. There are numerous springs and a brook 

 on the tract. Two sets of old farm buildings are available for 

 such needs as arise. This tract, which is constituted by two old 

 farms, was purchased by the writer in the years 1911 and 1912 

 to serve both as a summer home and as a reservation which might, 

 as seemed desirable, be used for studies in animal behavior 



