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JL 



100 YEARS EXPLORING LIFE, 1888-1988 



elsewhere in the modern world. Easier transportation makes it all too 

 simple, for students today may forge out into the real world, whereas earlier 

 decades found them comfortably confined to Woods Hole. As long-time 

 MBL embryologist Cornelia Clapp wrote in 1888, it was even a bit dangerous 

 to venture outdoors at night because of the large boulders left by the glaciers 

 that had once covered the Cape. These cluttered the MBL land and kept 

 people indoors, at work. 



In those early days, most of the students in the courses were neophyte 

 researchers. High school science teachers or college teachers without 

 much research experience, they delighted in the introduction to diverse life 

 forms and to serious science. More advanced students signed on as inves- 

 tigators and pursued their own work, directed by the senior staff. With time, 

 the students in courses have become increasingly advanced, and those 

 wide-eyed, eager beginners go elsewhere. Very few undergraduates popu- 

 late the MBL courses, though the recent program to involve high school 

 students in doing their own research at the MBL demonstrates that 

 seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds are perfectly ready for scientific work and 

 may even be more curious and more willing to try new and risky things 



The general zoology lab 

 in Old Main with Leukart 

 charts and drawing on 

 the blackboard 

 MBL Archives. 



