DEPARTMENT OF MARINE BIOLOGY. 177 



STUDIES AT TORTUGAS IN 1914. 



The season at Tortugas, Florida, lasted from June 9 to July 30, when 

 the Laboratory was closed for the season in order to permit Dr. Harvey 

 and the Director to go to Jamaica, in order to present a letter of intro- 

 duction to the Governor from the British Ambassador, Sir Arthur 

 Cecil Spring-Rice, and also to conduct several researches and to deter- 

 mine with greater definiteness the best site for the research laboratory 

 which it is hoped maj^ be established in Jamaica; but these plans were 

 temporarily frustrated by the sudden advent of the European war. 



At Tortugas we enjoy to the fullest degree the rare advantage of 

 that isolation so felicitous to the prosecution of research, and our 

 Laboratory having been improved each j^ear remains the best equipped 

 marine station in the tropical world. Moreover, the fauna is now well 

 known to us and certain of the animals, such as Cassiopea, have pro- 

 vided exceptionally favorable material for researches in physiology. 

 But the abandonment of Fort Jefferson as a naval base has caused 

 the withdrawal of all communication with Key West, distant 68 miles 

 from Tortugas, and in order to maintain ourselves at Tortugas Vv^e are 

 obliged to make frequent voyages in the Anton Dohrn to Key West and 

 return, thus greatly increasing the cost of maintenance and interfering 

 with the orderly progress of the research work of the laboratory. 



It seems necessary, therefore, to use the Tortugas in future as a 

 branch laboratory and to establish our main station upon some such 

 island as Jamaica, the accessibility and healthfulness of which is being 

 rapidly improved, due to the new prosperity which has come as a conse- 

 quence of the opening of the Panama Canal. This would permit the 

 use of the Anton Dohrn for purely scientific work instead of as a passen- 

 ger and freight carrier, and the many problems of the oceanography of 

 the Florida Straits, the Tongue of the Ocean, the Bahamas, Cuba, and 

 the Gulf of Mexico would at once fall within the scope of our resources. 



Our buildings at Tortugas, while excellent for essential purposes, are 

 cheaply constructed of wood and were designed from the first to be 

 temporary structures; and in fact the total cost of all laboratory struc- 

 tures and docks at Tortugas to date, including the M,000 insurance 

 loss due to the hurricane of October 1910, has been $13,719, while the 

 total cost of the operations of the Laboratory has been $213,860. 

 Thus, less than one-fifteenth of the expenditure has been for buildings, 

 and the chief value of our property is in vessels, machinery, equipment, 

 and apparatus. Moreover, it is not proposed to abandon the Tortugas 

 plant, but to use it only for certain researches for which it affords 

 preeminent advantages. 



The cheap cost of labor in Jamaica and the training the negroes 

 have received in erecting reinforced-concrete structures in the rebuild- 

 ing of Kingston will render it a relatively inexpensive matter to conduct 

 there a laboratory which will be both scientifically serviceable and 



