4 I THE LIBRARY AND PUBLICATIONS /A 83 



part, he suggested to Allis that an American journal would prove extremely 

 valuable, and that it was a disgrace that none existed. Allis promised 

 support, and Whitman began editing the new Journal of Morphology. 

 Designed to carry long papers with what Whitman regarded as the requisite 

 degree of detail and quality, the journal proved very expensive to run. 

 Conklin's dissertation in 1897 cost $2,000, and others must have come close. 

 Whitman never settled for less than the best possible, however, so the 

 journal continued publishing excellent and finely illustrated articles until it 

 had to close down briefly because of the deficit. Fortunately, the Wistar 

 Institute resumed publication soon after. 



In addition to the Journal of Morphology, Whitman soon recognized 

 the advantage of having a companion publication for shorter articles that 

 could be published quickly. This took the form of the Zoological Bulletin. 

 After two volumes in 1897 and 1898, however. Whitman and his cofounder, 

 Harvard entymologist William Morton Wheeler, decided to transfer editor- 

 ship to the MBL and to change the title to the Biological Bulletin. Its 

 three-dollar price for three hundred pages produced a per-page cost that 

 remained about the same into the 1940s, after which it joined the escalating 

 world market. It has always been intended as a general journal, never 

 restricted to MBL research or researchers (only 9 percent of the articles in 

 the most recent year were by MBL scientists), and includes work on a variety 

 of biological topics. More recently, it has published papers from special 

 symposia and the set of abstracts of papers presented at the General 

 Scientific Meetings held each August at the MBL. 



With these two publications in his power and as leader of the MBL, 

 Whitman became a very influential figure in American biology. In addition 

 to these periodicals, the MBL also issued Biological Lectures in order to 

 publish the Friday evening lectures under his directorships. With time, of 

 course, numerous other journals have appeared, including a considerable 

 number begun by MBL researchers. 



One such periodical was the Collecting Net, begun by Ware Cattell. 

 Cattell was an unusual individual who specialized in electrophysiology and 

 inspired various enterprises, such as this popular newspaper. The paper 

 w^as put together each week by Dot Rogers and a friend on their way over 

 to the printer in New Bedford. They worked on the boat ride over, delivered 

 the copy, waited for the printed papers, and returned with them in a short 

 time. The more recent version of the Collecting Net is put out by the Public 

 Information Department, under the direction of George Liles, and serves 

 to inform the wider MBL community of activities there. The first run of 

 those wonderful mixtures of science and gossip resides in the Rare Books 

 Room and Archives of the library. 



