360 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1914. 
strong trend toward oceanographic studies. At the tropical bio- 
logical station at Tortugas, Fla., founded by the Carnegie Institution 
of Washington, they have begun with the Anton Dohrn a series of 
hydrographic and biological studies covering the Caribbean Sea and 
the very sources of the Gulf Stream. ‘‘It would be a source of regret 
for Americans,’ writes Dr. Alfred G. Mayer, director of the Tortugas 
station,! ‘to fall to an inferior level in this important field of studies.’’ 
At the San Diego marine biological station on the coast of Cali- 
fornia, the Alexander Agassiz is methodically carrying on the ex- 
ploration of the coast of southern California. This ship is provided 
with all the necessary machinery and apparatus for dredging, sound- 
ing, fishing, determination of temperatures, taking specimens of sea 
water at all depths, measuring currents, and measuring the intensity 
of the light in the sea water.’ 
In addition to these, the Grampus, a schooner specially assigned to 
this duty through the cooperation of the United States Bureau of 
Fisheries and the Museum of Comparative Zoology of Cambridge, 
Mass., has been given the task of investigating the characteristics of 
the Gulf of Maine, from the point of view of temperature, salinity, 
the currents, and the plankton. The fact that waters of diame- 
trically opposed origins (the Gulf Stream and the cold littoral cur- 
rent) here meet, leads one to think that a study of this gulf, using 
modern methods, would be of interest from an oceanographic point 
of view and might have a favorable influence on the quite considerable 
fisheries of which it is the headquarters. H. B. Bigelow, who directs 
the cruises of the Grampus, has just published the chief results of the 
campaign of 1912. He seems to establish the fact that the Gulf of 
Maine owes its low temperature and its low degree of salinity chiefly 
to local causes—to its geographical position and its partial isolation by 
the Georgian Bank. The cold water comes from the St. Lawrence and 
its tributaries and probably has no connection with the cold Labrador 
current, contrary to the opinion generally held in scientific works as 
well as in popular belief. Bigelow and his collaborators propose to 
study the correlation between the geographic and seasonal distribu- 
tion of the most important elements of the plankton and the physical 
characters of the waters in which they live, and to try to determine 
the factors controlling their periods of reproduction, their migrations, 
etc. The work of 1912 was but a preliminary investigation of the 
problem; the materials gathered require long study before yielding 
the results which we may expect from them. 
1 Annual report of the director, 1912, p. 188. 
2 Cf. Ch. Gravier, le Laboratoire de Biologie tropicale de Tortugas (Floride), Revue génér. des Sc. pures 
et appl., 1913, No. 23, pp. 874-882. La station biologique marine de San Diego (Californie), ibid., 1912, 
No. 11, pp. 440-443. 
