1897] A CALIFORNIAN MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION 33 
The boats go out with nets and red pine fires, which are hung cresset- 
wise over the sides of the boats to lure the squid. Some of these are 
intended to be cleaned and dried on latticed trays as a staple article 
of diet in Chinese markets. The bulk of the catch is, however, 
spread over the fields for drying, then to be packed in matting bags 
for export to China, as a rich fertilizer for the rice fields, Another 
phase of their industry is that of collecting abalones, Haliotis, these 
also to be dried for export. The people have their usual Oriental 
thrift—they are infamous at a bargain, but make up this deficiency 
by the skill with which they separate the fertile or unfertile eggs of 
sharks or Bdellostoma, and recognise what they refer to as the ‘ hen’ 
or ‘rooster’ sharks or rat-fish (Chimaera). 
There is also another little imported village in this neighbour- 
hood, nearer Monterey, namely, a settlement of Portuguese, who, 
like the Chinese, have retained minutely their foreign ways. Their 
boats are precisely those one would see in the Tagus, and, judging 
from the writer’s experience in Portugal, he believes that the 
immigrants have not improved in the way of zoological collectors. 
The laboratory has now completed its fifth season, and the work 
of last year seems to have been carried on very much in the lines 
of former years. There is a class in the dissection of types, and in 
the study of methods, limited to twenty or thirty students, each 
paying a stated fee for a term of six weeks. A second class includes 
advanced students in zoology, mainly from Palo Alto. The investi- 
gators, finally to be mentioned, occupy the private rooms in both 
buildings. These are afforded their quarters, reagents, and collect- 
ing facilities gratuitously. Class instruction is carried on by the pro- 
fessors of the Stanford University, during the present year by 
Doctors Jenkins, Shaw, and Wilbur. Among the investigators of 
the past summer were W. R. Shaw, working on the development 
of conifers, E. P. Wheeler, on the embryology of Dicyema and on 
diptera, D. A. Saunders, on the brown seaweeds, H. Heath, on the 
anatomy and development of Chiton, O. P. Jenkins, on contractility 
of muscles and conductivity of nerve-tissues in invertebrates, H. P. 
Johnson, on the annelids, and W. E. Ritter, on the ascidians, W. 
A. Setchell, on (laminarian) seaweeds, and the present writer, on the 
development of Chamaera and Bdellostoma. Many of these investi- 
gators have previously spent summers at the laboratory. Among the 
workers of former seasons might be mentioned H. Ayers, whose 
lecture on JSdellostoma, published in the volume of zoological 
lectures of Wood’s Holl Laboratory (1893), has merited wide atten- 
tion. Dr C. H. Gilbert, as the director of the station jointly with 
Dr Jenkins, has also been a constant visitor, and has here prepared 
no little part of his studies on the ichthyology of the Pacific. Dr 
E. C, Price, also one of the zoological staff at Palo Alto, was the 
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