A BIOLOGICAL STATION. 



•39 



does not strike me as at all extravagant or even as exceeding 

 by a hair's breadth the essentials. Whoever feels it an advan- 

 tage to be fettered by self-imposed limitations will part com- 

 pany with us here. If any one is troubled witn tne question, 

 Of what use is an ideal too large to be realized } I v.-ill answer 

 at once : It is the merit of this ideal that it can be realized, 

 just as every sound ideal can be realized, only by gradual 

 growth. An ideal that could be realized all at once would ex- 

 clude growth and leave nothing to be done but to work on in 

 grooves. That is precisely the danger we are seeking to avoid. 



The two fundamental requisites which I have just defined 

 scarcely need any amplification. Their implications, however, 

 are far-reaching, and I may therefore point out a little more 

 explicitly what is involved. I have made use of the term "bio- 

 logical station " in preference to those in more common use, 

 for the reason that my ideal rejects every artificial limitation 

 that might check growth or force a one-sided development. I 

 have in mind, then, not a station devoted exclusively to zoology, 

 or exclusively to botany, or exclusively to physiology ; not a 

 station limited to the study of marine plants and animals, not 

 a lacustral station dealing only with land and fresh-water 

 faunas and floras, not a station limited to experimental work, 

 but a genuine biological station, embracing all these important 

 divisions, absolutely free of every artificial restriction. 



Now that is a scheme that can grow just as fast as biology 

 grows, and I am of the opinion that nothing short of it could 

 ever adequately represent a national centre of instruction and 

 research in biology. Vast as the scheme is, at least in its 

 possibilities, it is a true germ, all the principal parts of which 

 could be realized in respectable beginnings in a very few years 

 and at no enormous expense. With scarcely anything beyond 

 our hands to work with, we have already succeeded in getting 

 zoology and botany well started at Wood's Holl, and physiology 

 is ready to follow. 



If now experimental biology could be started, even in a 

 modest way, it would add immensely to the general attractions 

 of our work, for it would open a field which is comparatively 

 new and of rapidly growing importance. There are so many 



