38 £, 



100 YEARS EXPLORING LIFE, 1888-1988 



representing the patient biologist who carefully counted his sweet peas in the 

 monastery gardens and who saw the basic foundations of genetics forty 

 years too soon — rings first, calling "I will teach you of life, — and of life 

 eternal." Pasteur, French chemist, microbiologist, and vanquisher of mate- 

 rialist ideas about spontaneous generation of life, responds, "Thanks be to 

 God." The 7 a.m. call gets everyone to the fixed-schedule breakfast on time 

 and back to work for another busy day. 



In the increasingly expensive and tourist-influenced Woods Hole 

 Village, providing housing is essential for the MBL to attract researchers and 

 students. To attract instructors for the courses and advanced researchers 

 with children in a time of relative prosperity, where people are not used to 

 the crowded quarters and primitive conditions that most visitors endured in 

 the early years, the lab found it had to provide real housing instead of just 

 rooms. Thus, over the years, houses have been added on the old Fay 

 property or in Devil's Lane. 



In 1916 the Fay family, always friends of the laboratory, sold twenty-one 

 acres of wooded, hilly land to the MBL at a very favorable price. Called the 

 "Gansett property, ' this land was laid out in lots with the understanding that 

 buyers must give the MBL first option on resale and that the trees must be 

 preserved. The Devil's Lane property, acquired in 1925, had similar condi- 

 tions, though it originally included land that some thought might best be 

 used in the future to develop chemical and physical laboratories to operate 

 alongside the biological lab. The MBL sold parts of the Devil's Lane and 

 neighboring properties acquired later and has built some housing there 

 itself for rental purposes. As recently as 1986 twenty new houses joined the 

 earlier cottages at Devil's Lane. Distinctly designed to remain inconspicuous 



Some of the new houses 



built for summer 

 iinvstiffitors, 1986. 

 MBL Ardiives. 



