DEPARTMENT OF MARINE BIOLOGY. 165 



years and will be a most important port of call after the opening of 

 the Panama Canal. In fact, it is destined to be to the Atlantic what 

 Hawaii is to the Pacific — the centrally-situated island. Health con- 

 ditions have also improved decidedly upon Jamaica within the past 

 decade, and on the whole it appears, with its wonderfully rich marine 

 fauna, good land fauna, and the deep-ocean water around it, to afford 

 the best possible place for the most effective continuation of our 

 studies. The laboratory we advocate the estabhshment of should 

 become "the Naples of America." 



Within five years it will become necessary to renew the older of our 

 wooden laboratory buildings at Tortugas, owing to the rapid deterio- 

 ration of such structures in a tropical climate, but instead of doing this, 

 the Director recommends that concrete structures be built by native 

 labor upon Jamaica, and that the laboratory be gradually moved so 

 that at the end of about five years we may wholly abandon the Tor- 

 tugas. The change does not contemplate any increase in the annual 

 appropriations for the laboratory, for, owing to the low cost of labor 

 and of food in Jamaica, the expense of maintaining a laboratory 

 there should not be half as great as it is upon the Tortugas. 



During 1914 it will be necessary for the Department to make a 

 cruise to the Bahamas to revisit Golding Cay and the reefs of Andros 

 Island in order that Dr. Vaughan may secure his data upon the 

 growth-rate of Bahaman corals, the geologic history of the islands, 

 and the formation of the ooHte. It is the hope of the Director that 

 this expedition may also serve to grant an opportunity for certain 

 well-qualified investigators to conduct intensive oceanographic and 

 ecological studies in the deep region of the Tongue of the Ocean. 

 After this, the Tortugas Laboratory will be maintained open during 

 the summer of 1914. 



In 1915, however, the Director hopes to devote the entire season 

 to an expedition to Jamaica, granting opportunities for research in 

 their chosen fields to at least 15 students who have already attained 

 distinction through their abihty as investigators. This expedition 

 would provide us with a definite basis upon which to calculate the 

 expenses of the proposed change of base and the best manner of 

 effecting it, should it finally be deemed advisable. We would also 

 be able to determine the health conditions in summer, the best 

 site for the proposed laboratory, and other important factors in 

 the problem. Should the change be decided upon, the apparatus and 

 parts of the buildings now at the Tortugas could readily be trans- 

 ported to Jamaica, thus materially reducing the cost of the project. 

 In fact, the plan is not to establish a new laboratory, but merely to 

 move our old one. Jamaica now has direct steamship lines to the 

 United States, England, and German}^, and thus it would afford an 

 ideal site for a truly international laboratorj', the establishment of 

 which Huxley long ago so eloquently advocated. 



