440 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



necessary that Brooks should turn to the Chesapeake Bay to 

 make his environment supply his needs. 



Accordingly, we find him in the spring of 1878 making a pre- 

 liminary survey in search of a suitable spot for a Summer School 

 in which to study the problems of life in the sea. Unfortunately 

 the low sandy shores and reputed unwholesomeness of the mouth 

 of the Bay offered but poor substitutes for the cold rocky shores of 

 Newport, but he, as ever, made the best use of what was available. 

 With a small sum granted by the University in 1878, he opened 

 the first session of the "Chesapeake Zoological Laboratory," at 

 Fort Wool, Virginia. 



An artificial heap of stones, making an island of six acres extent, 

 covered by fortifications and twenty miles from the ocean, was 

 indeed a strange location for a marine laboratory, but lying in the 

 Bay, three miles from one shore and one and a half from the other 

 it had the advantage of some fifteen miles of tide-water sweeping 

 by back and forth; though, to be sure, communication with the 

 mainland was not always convenient. Here some seven workers 

 made up the tentative laboratory that was in session eight weeks, 

 and here Brooks had the opportunity to study the ancient animal 

 forms Lingula and Amphioxus. 



Though with but crude and scanty apparatus and relying upon 

 occasional brief aid of tugboats for dredging expeditions, the party 

 did good work which was published with the financial aid of citi- 

 zens of Baltimore, Shoemaker, Garret, Pratt, Uhler, Gilman, 

 Martin and others, as The Scientific Results of the Chesapeake 

 Zoological Laboratory. 



The history of the laboratory henceforth is Brooks' history, 

 and we cannot refrain from recounting its annual periods of 

 activity. In the second year, 1879, Crisfield, Maryland, the 

 great oyster center, was selected in order that Brooks might aid 

 the Maryland Fish Commission in the study of the oyster. Some 

 eleven members of the laboratory lived there, having three barges 

 as their laboratory, from June 25 to August 8, when even their 

 enthusiastic endurance was forced to yield to the native mosquito, 

 whom the inhabitants endured only by making " smudges" in 



