A BIOLOGICAL STATION. 24 1 



is all-important, — there should be not only aquaria and plenty 

 of running water, but also a number of ponds with a continuous 

 supply of water, so arranged that the forms under observation 

 could be bred and reared in isolation when necessary. Finally, 

 there should be room for keeping land animals and plants 

 under favorable conditions for cultivation and study. A sta- 

 tion with such facilities as have been briefly indicated would 

 furnish ideal conditions for the prosecution of research in 

 nearly every department of biology, and especially in embryol- 

 ogy and physiology. "1 



If such a station could be developed in immediate connection 

 with the plant already under way at Wood's Holl, we mio-ht 

 begin to realize what a biological station stands for. 



We need to get more deeply saturated with the meanino- of 

 the word "biological," and to keep renewing our faith in it as 

 a governing conception. Our centrifugal specialities have no 

 justification except in the ensemble, and each one of them is 

 prolific in grotesque absurdities, for which there is no correc- 

 tion in disconnection with the organic whole. But why talk 

 of an organic whole, which no man can grasp, or make any 

 pretension to mastering >. Precisely that makes it necessary to 

 talk and act as if we knew the fact, and as if our inability had 

 not rendered us insensible to our need. Physiology is mean- 

 ingless without morphology, and morphology equally so without 

 physiology. Both find their meaning in biology, and in nothing 

 less. What an absurdity was human anatomy without com- 

 parative anatomy ; and comparative anatomy was only a much 

 bigger absurdity until the general connection of things began 

 to dawn in the conceptions of biology. Just think of a physi- 

 ologist seriously proclaiming to the world that instinct reduces 

 itself in the last analysis to heliotropism, stereotropism, and 

 the like. The whole course of evolution drops out of sight 

 altogether, and things are explained as if the organic world 

 were a chemical creation only a few hours old. The absurdity 

 would be no greater for a geologist to try to explain the earth 

 without reference to its past history. 



Think of a young morphologist, with all the advantages of 



^ Programme of Courses in Biology, Chicago, 1892. 



