A MARINE BIOLOGICAL OBSERVATORY. 467 



deeply the interests of science would be affected, that further re- 

 marks on my part would be superfluous. 



The Opinions of Various Authorities in Science on the 

 Proposed Marine Observatory. — Carl Vogt, the veteran biolo- 

 gist of Geneva, the friend and scientific colleague of the late Prof. 

 Louis Agassiz, and the pioneer advocate of marine observatories 

 in Europe, sets forth the aims and the importance of marine 

 biology in the following letter : 



University of Geneva, January 25, 1892. 



Deae Sib: You ask my opinion concerning the utility of a marine biological 

 laboratory with a view to enlarging and perfecting tbe one already established, 

 on a plan too modest and limited, at Woods Holl. 



I will not begin my letter with a word-quibble. But I believe that, in the 

 actual state of science, institutions like the one you contemplate are not only of 

 great and undoubted utility, but absolutely necessary. Neither theoretical and 

 abstract science, nor the application of science to highly important practical ends, 

 can achieve results of value without seriously and systematically supporting 

 marine biological stations. 



As yon very truly remark in your letter, my convictions on this subject are 

 not of recent date. I have entertained them for more than forty years — in fact, 

 ever since the days when I devoted myself, alone and without other resources 

 than my own activity, to biology, and carried on my studies for several consecu- 

 tive years on the shores of the Atlantic and Mediterranean. For many years I 

 vainly attempted to get the governments of maritime countries and trained biolo- 

 gists to carry out my ideas and projects. Some could not comprehend them, and 

 to others they seemed eccentric. After years of fruitless attempts on my own 

 part, I was happy to see the efforts of my friends who shared my views meet 

 with success, and I continue to feel a pleasant satisfaction when I hear of the 

 establishment of new stations whenever it is seriously undertaken. And I main- 

 tain that you are very fortunate in living in a country where the citizens are 

 accustomed through their own private initiative to found institutions of interest 

 to the public, where they know how to endow their institutions liberally, and 

 often magnificently; whereas in our old continental Europe we can do nothing 

 without the good will of the governments, which interest themselves in every 

 undertaking, and lavish the better part of their revenues in sterile bounties on an 

 unproductive military class. 



But let us come down to facts. I maintain that marine stations are necessary 

 for biological science, since nowhere but in the sea can there be found a host of 

 types whose study is indispensable if one desires to form a clear and concise idea 

 of the ensemhle of the organic world, of which we ourselves are members. Now, 

 the greater part of these organisms, vegetable as well as animal, are so delicate 

 that, notwithstanding our improved methods of preservation, we can not acquire 

 even an approximately correct idea of their characters unless they can be studied 

 in their natural medium — the sea. "We now enumerate along the coast of con- 

 tinental Europe almost as many laboratories as universities. Would these have 

 been founded, often at great trouble and expense, if the need of them had not 

 been urgently felt? And to mention only one branch of biological scionce — 

 morphology — would this have reached the position which it occupies to-day were 



