Sumner introduced weekly meetings of a "research club" 

 for general discussion of scientific problems of mutual interest. 

 This practice has been continued by all his successors. 



On Sunday, August 25, 1907, the Laboratory was visited 

 by the members of the Seventh International Zoological Congress 

 held in Washington. The group that accepted the Bureau of Fisher- 

 ies invitation included 13 scientists from Russia, who were given 

 overnight accommodations in the residence building of the Lab- 

 oratory. The party was carried next day by the Fish Hawk to 

 New Bedford, and one dredging was made en route as a demon- 

 stration of the American technique of oceanic research. 



One of the Russian delegates was G. A. Koshewnikow, 

 professor and Director of the Zoological Museum and Laboratory 

 of the Imperial Moscow University. Upon his return he told the 

 group of advanced students, which included the author of this 

 paper, a glorifying account of the work of the Fisheries Labora- 

 tory. His talk about the research conducted at Woods Hole and 

 the photographs of the Fisheries Laboratory made a deep impres- 

 sion on the minds of the young zoologists. 



Sumner's acquaintance with Woods Hole covered a period 

 of 14 years. His first visit was in 1897 when he was a graduate 

 student at Columbia University. In his autobiography Sumner 

 (1945a) refers to that period as the "Golden Age" of the Woods 

 Hole colony, when the most insignificant beginner in biology 

 came into intimate contact with men whom he had long heard cited 

 as authorities by his professors at college. He describes the days 

 when the MBL was housed in a few small buildings, when almost 

 every point on the beach could be reached without "violating the 

 'trespass' warnings; the automobiles were scarce even in 1911 

 (fig. 28) the pleasure boats and yachts were seldom seen". In 

 1903 he received the summer appointment as Director of the Lab- 

 oratory at the maximum salary of $100 per month. The Labora- 

 tory of the Bureau of Fisheries had at that time much better basic 

 equipment, larger collecting boats, and more attractive living 

 quarters than those available at the MBL. Although the MBL lack- 

 ed funds for equipment and facilities, it already enjoyed a high 

 scientific reputation for basic research. In addition to the survey 

 of Buzzards Bay and Vineyard Sound, Sumner carried on a num- 

 ber of investigations, some of which were the continuation of the 

 experimental embryology of fishes he started at Naples, Italy. 

 One of them was an experimental study of selection in fishes, in 

 which he attempted to demonstrate measurable differences between 

 the survivors and nonsurvivors of killifish, Fundulus, that were 

 transferred to fresh water. During his spare time he initiated the 

 study of the differences induced in a population of white mice by 

 low temperature, and their possible transmission by heredity. 

 This work was a stepping stone to his fundamental research in 

 genetics, distribution, and evolution of the subspecies of deer 

 mice Peromyscus carried on in later years at Scripps Institution 

 at La JoUa, Calif. 



64 



