468 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



we not in possession of marine biological laboratories, where most remarkable 

 investigations have been and are still being carried on ? To mention only the 

 more important of these laboratories, where would morphology be without the 

 works that have been produced in Naples, Roscoff, Banyuls, Wimereux, Marseilles, 

 Villefranche, and so many other stations ? In truth, those who would pretend 

 that morphological science can advance and develop without the aid of these 

 murine laboratories could equally well defend the paradox that astronomy can 

 advance without the aid of observatories. 



I need hardly say that I do not limit the term "morphology' 1 to investiga- 

 tions in the structure and organization of the various organisms to be found in 

 the sea; I would also include under it the most lofty questions and most abstract 

 generalizations to which we are led by morphological research. Researches in 

 organic evolution, to which Darwin has given so powerful and fruitful an impetus, 

 can not be undertaken without due consideration of the marine fauna. The sea 

 is really the source of organic life in its ensemble; researches on the relation- 

 ships of different animals, on their origin, on their individual development, from 

 the first visible germ to the completion of their life-cycle, are continually and 

 necessarily leading us back to marine organisms. In order to form a conception 

 of the development of the organic horizons as they extend through the successive 

 periods of the history of our planet, we are obliged continually to recur to the 

 comparative study of marine forms. 



But the researches of present and future science are not limited to morphology 

 and its conclusions. We demand a knowledge of the functions of the various 

 organs whose structure has been studied, in order to understand the role which 

 they played in the elaboration of life ; we are desirous of knowing how the varied 

 functions over which the organs preside are exercised. This is the aim of physio- 

 logical investigation, which up to the present has been carried on only on man 

 and a few animals predestined to experiment, such as the dog, the rabbit, and 

 the frog. 



I do not hesitate to say, if there were no marine laboratories in existence, they 

 should be created for the prosecution of physiological investigation. In every 

 case existing and future laboratories should be constructed in such a way as to 

 admit of the carrying out of physiological experiments on a grand scale. The 

 field is almost new ; it has hardly been touched as yet, but the few works which 

 have been produced in this line prove that most magnificent results await us in 

 the future, and that general physiology will be quite as much enriched and even 

 improved by means of such laboratories as has been the case with morphology. 

 Many of my friends, themselves directors of marine laboratories, have felt the 

 need of physiological equipment; many of them have expressed themselves to 

 this effect in articles and other publications. In Naples they have taken a step 

 in advance in this direction; but, to render these studies productive, delicate 

 instruments are needed, apparatus costly beyond the means of existing labora- 

 tories. "Will your fellow-countrymen furnish such means? It would be a glory 

 to the United States could these projects there be realized, which have to be 

 abandoned in other countries on account of insufficient resources. 



You justly call your prospective laboratory "biological." I ardently wish 

 that your countrymen, so nobly generous when it comes to founding scientific 

 institutions, would saturate themselves with the meaning of the word "biologi- 

 cal." Biology includes much more than morphology and physiology, which treat 

 only of the mainsprings of individual life ; it includes also the life of organisms 

 in its totality; it should study the reciprocal relations which animals living in a 



