MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION AT PORT ERIN. 303 



but in a manner so different from their ordinary school 

 life that it would be a rest and a mental refreshment. 



The importance of studying living Nature, and the uses 

 that ought to be made of Biological Stations in education, 

 are rapidly coming to be recognised in many other parts 

 of the world. Here these institutions are not yet recog- 

 nised as university laboratories, and time spent in them 

 does not count in the curriculum for degrees. But in far 

 Japan, Professor Mitsukuri tells me all the Biological 

 Students of Tokio University are required to spend at 

 least one season at the Marine Station of Misaki, which is 

 a recognised institution of the University, while those who 

 propose to graduate in Biology must spend a considerably 

 longer period in such work. Many of the American Uni- 

 versities have Biological Stations as a necessary part of 

 their equipment ; and, in some cases, professors, staff, and 

 students regularly migrate for the summer term to the 

 sea-side laboratory. 



Although England led the way in the past in Marine 

 Biology, we are now behind other countries in the facilities 

 and arrangements which cannot be provided by private 

 enterprise. But all these things will come in time. We 

 shall have University Biological Stations and Municipal 

 Biological Stations some day. The pity is that we cannot 

 have them now instead of 10, 20, or 30 years hence. 

 Sir Michael Foster, in a recent address, has said : — " It is 

 a matter of regret that the enthusiasm of the young learner 

 should be spent wholly on the museum and the laboratory, 

 that he should be pushed by compulsion and drawn by 

 rewards into morphological and physiological studies of 

 the more formal and mechanical kind, while no encourage- 

 ment is given to him to look Nature face to face in the 

 field, and to catch direct from her lips the Catholic teaching 

 which she alone can give." 



