142 FOUNDERS OF OCEANOGRAPHY 



the neighbouring Bay of Baiae. We can see the Torpedo or 

 electric ray in an open shallow tank, and by putting the 

 thumb above and the fingers under the animal's flat shoulders, 

 whilst we pull or squeeze the tail with the other hand, an 

 electric shock can be obtained. Octopus, squids and other 

 cuttle-fish are present in abundance ; crabs that mimic their 

 surroundings, those with anemones and with sponges on 

 their backs, animals that look like plants, corals and sea-fans 

 of many kinds, worms that live in leathery tubes a foot long 

 and expand out of the top, like gorgeous flowers six inches 

 across with innumerable spirally-arranged petals — these 

 seem to be the favourites with visitors. But probably the 

 most interesting tanks to the scientific man are those con- 

 taining the recently caught " plankton," the Medusae and 

 other delicate and gelatinous surface organisms. There is one 

 marvellous creature that can be seen almost nowhere else, the 

 Gestus veneris, "Venus's girdle,'* which is like an undulating, 

 pulsating band of light, in some positions absolutely trans- 

 parent, in others flashing iridescent fire like a diamond from 

 its sides. So much for the public aquarium, which, at an 

 admission fee of two francs, brings in to the institution a 

 revenue of about £1,000 a year. Now a word as to the 

 publications of the station before the war. 



Workers at Naples are free to publish the results of their 

 investigations where they like, and records of the good work 

 in all departments of biology which has been done at this 

 station are to be found in all civilized countries in the form of 

 memoirs and articles contributed to the scientific periodicals 

 of the world. But still a considerable amount of the whole, 

 including a number of the more extended, more solid and 

 more noteworthy contributions, has been published at Naples 

 as a noble series of monographs on the Fauna and Flora of the 

 Gulf of Naples — each monograph being one or more quarto 

 volumes, richly illustrated, and dealing with one particular 

 group of animals or a section thereof. This great series, of 

 which over thirty monographs have now appeared, is amongst 



