326 FOUNDERS OF OCEANOGRAPHY 



invertebrates upon which it preys and then to the food of 

 these, and so down to the smallest and simplest organisms 

 in the sea, and each such chain must have all its links fully 

 worked out as to seasonal and quantitative occurrence back 

 to the Diatoms and Flagellates which depend upon physical 

 conditions and take us beyond the range of biology — but 

 not beyond that of oceanography. The Diatoms and the 

 Flagellates are probably more important than the more 

 obvious sea- weeds, not only as food, but also in supplying 

 to the water the oxygen necessary for the respiration of 

 living protoplasm. In addition to the numbers present 

 at any time, the further object must be to estimate the rate 

 of production and rate of destruction of all organic substances 

 in the sea. Lohmann has estimated that at Kiel, through- 

 out the year, the plants make up 56 per cent, and the 

 animals 44 per cent, of the plankton, and that the plants 

 have an average daily accession of 30 per cent, (in volume) 

 which is consumed by the animals. 



To attain to an approximate census and valuation of the 

 sea — remote though it may seem — is a great aim, but it is 

 not sufficient. We want not only to record and to count 

 natural objects, but also to understand them. We require 

 to know not merely what an organism is — in the fullest 

 detail of structure and development and affinities — and 

 also where it occurs— again in full detail — and in what abun- 

 dance under different circumstances, but also how it lives, 

 and what all its relations are to both its physical and its 

 biological environment, and that is where the physiologist, 

 and especially the bio-chemist, can help us. In the best 

 interests of biological progress the day of the naturalist 

 who merely collects, the day of the anatomist and histologist 

 who merely describe, is over, and the future is with the 

 observer and the experimenter animated by a divine curio- 

 sity to enter into the life of the organism and understand 

 how it lives and moves and has its being — '' Felix qui potuit 

 rerum cognoscere causas." 



