56 



during the brief and discontinuous periods of study to which most un- 

 iversity professors must limit their researches. As headquarters 

 for such work a shore laboratory is needed, equipped for first-class 

 investigations of the chemical and physiological problems that will 

 arise from prelim.inary and exploratory studies made on shipboard. 

 A further obstacle is the need in most of such problems for continu- 

 ous cooperation between students specializing in different fields. : 



The sea water environment offers even a better opportunity to 

 expand our knowledge of the reactions of the protoplasm of the cell 

 itself to the chemical solution that forms its immediate surroundings, 

 by furnishing large, free living cells, as objects for experimenta- 

 tion. Reference must be made on the one hand to the considerations 

 which led to work upon balanced solutions, and to the recent and 

 very suggestive work on selective permeability and accumulation of 

 ions. It is from knowledge gained' in this field that we see our 

 greatest hope of comprehending the processes and reactions that set 

 all living matter apart from all non-living. 



Sea water being not only a favorable, but what is more important, 

 a complete environment (for it contains in solution all the known 

 elements not only in simple inorganic, but in organic combination), 

 having properties, i.e. temperature, total salt content, concentra- 

 tions of different solutes, ionic dissociations; osmotic pressure, 

 etc. that can be precisely defined, measured and altered at will under 

 controlled laboratory conditions, it offers our best opportunity to 

 study all those interactions between protoplasm and its surroundings 

 by which life is sustained, none of which can be directly traced in 

 the air, nor could be in fresh water unless the latter carried 

 substances of some sort or another in solution. In fact, it seems 

 probable, if not certain, that the quantitative treatment of the 

 problem of cellular interchange with the environment must always be 

 founded in large part upon the use of sea water. However, while we 

 now have at our service methods by which the physical and chemical 

 properties of sea water can be measured with a high degree of refine- 

 mient, we still need, for a rational beginning, a physiological inter- 

 pretation of what sea water really is. As one contributor points out, 

 we know that it is frequently far from being in equilibrium with the 

 atmosphere. At times and places it is supersaturated with oxygen and 

 with calcium carbonate. On the other hand, while sea water carries 

 in solution every known element, many of these are in such attenuated 

 concentration (and p:;rhaps entirely ionized) that they have defied 

 detection by ordinary chemical analysis, though their presence in the 

 shells or tissues of m.arine animals proves that they exist in the 

 solution. As examples of xhis we might mention the Strontium in the 

 shells leid down by certain unicellular animals belonging to the 

 group Radiolaria; the VanadiuiH recognized in the blood of /^scidians 

 and in Holuthurians; the Cobalt in the tissues of lobsters and mussels; 

 the lead found in the ash of various marine organisms though not yet 

 detected in the water itself. 



It seems that some of these rare substances are of great vital 

 importance. And the Question by what meGha.nisra the cell is able to 

 select them out of the water opens the whole problem of the specific 

 affinity of different cells for certain chemic?,ls, which forms the 

 basis for all the structures that protoplasm maruf^o-t-ur^s. We n"ight 



