DEPARTMENT OF MARINE BIOLOGY. 193 



Captain George W. Tracj^ William M. L. Wilson, and other members 

 of the crew who served under them. 



As in former years, so during this season, we have become still further 

 indebted to Captain Edward Everett Hayden, U. S. N., commandant 

 at Key West, for many acts of personal and official kindness. 



It is also a privilege to acknowledge an indebtedness to our Secretary 

 of State, who, moved by the request of President Woodward, kindly 

 granted to the Director a letter of introduction to American consuls 

 in the West Indies, which proved to be of decided advantage in this 

 year of war. 



REPORTS ON INVESTIGATIONS FOR THE SEASON OF 1914-1915. 



Examination of Marine Organisms to determine their Capacities for Storing 

 or Accumulating Metals, by Gilbert van Ingen and A. H. Phillips, Prince- 

 ton University. 



The senior author described at the meeting of the Geological Society of 

 America in Philadelphia, 1914, the common occurrence, in noteworthy though 

 not commercially valuable quantities, of the minerals sphalerite, galenite, 

 chalcopyrite and other metallic sulphides and sulphates, in reef formations 

 of early Paleozoic age, and announced his conviction that the organisms which 

 formed the reefs had been responsible for the initial separation from the sea- 

 water of the elements represented by these minerals. 



The elements in question are zinc, lead, copper, nickel, barium, strontium, 

 sulphur, fluorine. Iron and manganese were not considered in the same cate- 

 gory, although it was recognized that these had in many cases been accumulated 

 in vast quantities by organic agencies, as recently announced by Hayes, 

 Dale, and van Ingen. 



The organisms that made the ancient reefs were both animals and plants; 

 e. g., hydrocorallines, corals, alcyonaria, bryozoa, inarticulate brachiopods, 

 and calcareous algse. 



The geological evidence is strong that these ancient organisms gathered 

 the metals, known to be held in solution in the sea-water of to-day, and stored 

 them in considerable amounts in their tissues or excreted them, and were thus 

 responsible for the primary segregation of these metals in the sediments by 

 which the organisms were entombed. 



Search of the literature for information on the metal-storing activities of 

 recent organisms yielded very little of value, but the work of Mendel and 

 Bradley on the copper and zinc in marine mollusks was of such significance as 

 to lead us to begin a research with the object of determining in some degree 

 the extent to which marine organisms of the present day are engaged in storing 

 up various metals in their tissues or causing the accumulation of metals by 

 excreting them with their waste products. 



The facilities of the Tortugas Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution 

 enabled us to collect material, representing various groups of animals and algse, 

 which has been brought to Princeton for analysis. It was found impracticable 

 to attempt any analytical work at the Tortugas Laboratory, for all of om' 

 time was occupied in gathering the material and preparing it by drying for 

 shipment. This was done with due guarding against contamination from 

 outside sources. It is our plan to supplement the Tortugas material by other 

 collected from the north Atlantic coast and from fresh-water streams of this 

 vicinity. 



