MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATIONS 135 



collected and arranged them in his cabinets and museums. 

 The work was interesting and necessary, but to some extent 

 superficial. We see its importance enhanced in these later 

 days in the light of Darwinism. It was an enormous gain to 

 science when zoological and botanical laboratories were 

 equipped in the universities, and when every student came 

 to examine everything for himself and to probe as deeply as 

 possible into structure and function. It is no wonder if for 

 a time, in some quarters, in the fascinations of microscopic 

 dissection and section-cutting and mounting, there was per- 

 haps a tendency to lose sight of living nature, and to convert 

 refinement of method and beauty of preparation into the end, 

 in place of being only the means of the investigation. 



The biological station came to put all that right. It pre- 

 sented a happy union of the observational work of the field- 

 naturaHst with the minute investigations of the laboratory 

 student. It brought the laboratory to the seashore, and the 

 sea, in the form of well-equipped healthy tanks, within the 

 walls of the laboratory. It enabled the living organisms to 

 be studied almost in their native haunts by the most refined 

 laboratory methods. 



Fifty years ago the biological station was almost unknown ; 

 now there are, I suppose, about fifty or possibly more, large 

 and small, scattered along the shores of the civilized world 

 from the Arctic Circle to the tropics and AustraHa, from 

 western California to far Japan in the East — and of these the 

 parent institution, and by far the finest and most important, 

 is the world-renowned " Stazione Zoologica " at Naples. 



It is almost impossible to think of the Naples station apart 

 from Anton Dohrn. He was the founder, benefactor, director, 

 the centre of all its activities, the source of its inspiration. 

 He established the first building in 1872, and, although he has 

 had support from the German and Italian Governments and 

 from scientific institutions all over the world, still I beheve it 

 is no secret that his own private fortune, used unsparingly, 

 has contributed much to the permanence and success of the 



