5 THE PEOPLE 



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91 



Embryology class, 1897, including Gertrude Stein, front left. Photograph couitesy of WHHC Archives. 



in their careers — and far more specialized and sophisticated in their de- 

 mands—than they used to be. Rarely do high school teachers seeking their 

 first experience with living organisms populate the courses, as they once 

 did. Nor do many people arrive so casually as Frank Lillie did when 

 Whitman invited him to come on down to Woods Hole for the summer to 

 begin his graduate career. No longer are there as many eager novices to be 

 enthralled by tlieir first invertebrate collecting trips to Tarpaulin Cove or 

 Sippewissett Salt Marsh. 



Most of today's neurobiology students^ for example, are much more 

 advanced and dedicated to their sophisticated coursework. They simply do 

 not have time to experience what it is like to wade one's way through the 

 meandering streams of a salt marsh and to become mired down in mud so 

 that other students have to help pull you and your rubber waders out with 

 a loud sucking smack. A few do head out on a Sunday morning to catch 

 bluefish. Yet only rarely do the busy students have much free time to explore 

 the intertidal areas nearby and to gain respect for the fragile ecological 

 balance, though they may find time to play the time-honored pranks of 

 attaching a crab's claw to someone's ear or a lobster to a long skirt (or to 

 a pair of shorts today). Many still attend courses on their way to fame in 

 other fields, as Gertrude Stein did while she was briefly a medical student 



