1 I ARRIVING IN WOODS HOLE ^ 



RiDAY NIGHT in the summer, the cars roll into Woods Hole. Eager families 

 arrive for their ferry reservations to Martha's Vineyard. They have waited a 

 long time for this week to come, and they arrive early in anticipation. 

 Steamship Authority officials direct their cars into line. But hours remain 

 before the scheduled departure. The family locks the car and wanders the 

 streets of Woods Hole, this little piece of land at the bottom of Cape Cod. The 

 main street takes them past restaurants, specializing in seafood of course, 

 then past the grocery store. But what are the red brick buildings? Is there 

 some business or factory here, they ask? Only the business of science. 



As they move down the street, they may see a sundial on a little plaza 

 near the water. An MBL benefactor, plumbing magnate Charles R. Crane, 

 gave the Yalden sundial, which was designed to keep extremely accurate 

 time — reportedly to within one-half minute throughout the day— for Woods 

 Hole's particular location. A lobster provides the sundial with its local Cape 

 Cod flavor and a scientific twist. There is a small hole in the lobster, it is said, 

 because the stone engraver obtained his specimen from the MBL Supply 

 Department rather than from a local fisherman. Reportedly Harvard biolo- 

 gist George Howard Parker initially told the engraver that the claws were not 

 lifelike enough. He recommended a visit to the supply department. The 

 chosen model had a little hole in the back of the carapace, where it had been 

 injected. So does the sundial's lobster. 



Fridc^ Evening Lectures 



Very few of those waiting for the ferry make the turn past the lobster down 

 MBL Street, to the brick and wooden buildings and to the Eel Pond. Those 

 few who do so on a Friday night will see people converging from all 

 directions on the main lecture room of the MBL, in the Lillie Building. 

 Individuals trickle in from the library floors above, some with books in hand. 

 Groups of people wander over from the laboratories across the street or 

 down the hall, often chattering away about what is working or not 



