THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



555 



THE PEOGKESS OF SCIENCE. 



The summer laboratories and the 

 scientific expeditions which are employ- 

 ing the vacation period of the men of 

 science in this country would make a 

 long list. A vacation from teaching 

 means to the scientific man a chance to 

 work, and at present there are numer- 

 ous organized means of enabling him to 

 profit by this chance. The most defi- 

 nite form which such arrangements for 

 summer work have taken is the summer 

 laboratory or experiment station for 

 biologists. Such a station affords con- 

 veniently the mechanical appliances for 

 scientific work in a good locality for 

 collecting material to work with. The 

 marine or other forms of life are thus 

 made accessible to those whose profes- 

 sional work during the year keeps them 

 in an unfavorable locality. Besides 

 the laboratory at Woods Holl, which is 

 the nearest American representative of 

 Professor Dohrn's great laboratory at 

 Naples, there is an important summer 

 station at Cold Spring Harbor, Long 

 Island, under the auspices of the Brook- 

 lyn Institute, and others cared for by 

 Leland Stanford, Jr. University, the 

 University of Indiana, the Ohio State 

 University and other institutions. It is 

 common to combine teaching with re- 

 search at these laboratories and in some 

 cases they become essentially summer 

 schools, though generally giving courses 

 of a higher order than the ordinary sum- 

 mer school for nature study. But re- 

 search is often the chief and sometimes 

 the sole purpose of these stations, and 

 a vast amount of work is done each 

 year. The most important of these 

 summer stations is the Woods Holl Ma- 

 rine Biological Laboratory, situated on 

 the southern coast of Massachusetts, be- 

 tween Buzzard's Bay and Vineyard 

 Sound. This laboratory has been for- 

 tunate in having been the summer home 

 at one time or another of a majority of 



the leading zoologists of the country. 

 It has been usual for the advanced stu- 

 dents in universities to take courses or 

 carry on research there, and Woods Holl 

 training has been a valuable recommen- 

 dation. The reason is not far to seek. 

 The material advantages, the spirit of 

 zeal for concrete fact, the acquaintance 

 with superior men in the science and 

 with a large number of equals, all help 

 to give the best sort of professional 

 training. Such a place also serves as a 

 refinery where opinions and theories 

 may be purified by healthy criticism 

 and by the subtler influence of exam- 

 ple. There is a story of three eminent 

 biologists who got involved in a con- 

 troversy over a disputed question. They 

 argued for a while. Finally one of 

 them said: "Let us get the eggs in 

 question and study them together." 

 This was done, and the three men spent 

 the afternoon over their microscopes pa- 

 tiently working out the problem to- 

 gether; and they did work it out. One 

 of the great advantages of summer lab- 

 oratories is that they put fellow-stu- 

 dents in a frame of mind in which they 

 can work things out together. 



The Woods Holl Laboratory has a 

 right to claim a large share in the 

 credit for three of the most important 

 developments in biology in the last dec- 

 ade — the study of 'cell lineage,' of re- 

 generation of organs and of the influence 

 of abnormal conditions on the develop- 

 ment of embryos. Workers there have 

 traced the development of the different 

 cells into which the egg-cell divides and 

 have discovered just what parts of the 

 body arise from each group of cells. 

 They have shown that the way in which 

 the egg divides and redivides is as con- 

 stant, is as much a part of the nature 

 of the animal, as its adult form and 

 structure are. They have replaced pre- 



