232 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



made its way into botany; and last of all into zoology. 

 The herbarium or collection of dead plants was much 

 sooner superseded by the "jardin des plantes" than the 

 zoological museum with its skeletons, stuffed animals, and 

 specimens in alcohol has been supplanted by any scientific 

 collection of living animals. Marine stations, which study 

 plant and animal life in situ, are quite a recent invention. 1 

 The study of the forms of nature or morphology in the 

 earlier or more limited sense, referred thus more exclu- 



1 M. Yves Delage distinguishes 

 four great periods in the study 

 of living things. The first, cul- 

 minating in Linnaeus and Buffon, 

 studies living objects in the great 

 outlines of their external forms, of 

 the habits of plants and the cus- 

 toms of animals. Detailed exam- 

 ination by dissection is resorted to, 

 but only as a secondary method and 

 in order to supplement the intuitive 

 discovery of natural affinities. Then 

 comes the second period, that of 

 Cuvier and his followers, relying 

 mainly on anatomical dissection. 

 The third period begins with the 

 marine stations. "Je ne crains 

 pas de dire que la fondation des 

 laboratoires maritimes a marqu^ 

 une troisieme periode et constitue" 

 une nouvelle me"thode aussi im- 

 portante que les prece"dentes. Si 

 1'on songe que plus des trois 

 quarts des types d'inverte'bre's 

 appartiennent au monde de la 

 mer, que le plus grand nombre ne 

 pouvaient parvenir dans les cen- 

 tres scientifiques dans un e"tat 

 convenable pour 1'examen micro- 

 scopique, si Ton songe que tout 

 ce qui concerne leurs mceurs et leur 

 embryoge'nie ne peut s' e"tudier loin 

 de la mer, on comprend 1'importance 

 de ces creations. Faut-il rappeler 

 que 1'introduction de cette me'thode 

 est due a H. de Lacaze-Duthiers I 

 . . . Aussi la fondation du labora- 



toire de Roscoff a-t-elle etc le signal 

 de la creation d'une multitude 

 d'e"tablissements plus ou moins 

 similaires sur les c6tes de tous les 

 pays" ('L'He're'dite' et les grands 

 problemes de la Biologic,' p. 3). 

 The fourth period is marked by 

 microscopic anatomy, and this 

 according to M. Delage has its 

 home mainly in Germany. "The 

 study of marine zoology has, since 

 the publication of the ' Origin of 

 Species,' been found to require 

 more complete arrangements in the 

 form of laboratories and aquaria 

 than the isolated vacation student 

 could bring with him to the seaside. 

 Seaside laboratories have come into 

 existence : the first was founded in 

 France by Coste (1859) at Concar- 

 neau (Brittany) with a practical end 

 in view viz., the study of food- 

 fishes, with an aim to pisciculture. 

 . . . The largest and best-supported 

 pecuniarily is that founded at Naples 

 by Anton Dohrn in 1872 ; others 

 exist at Trieste, Villefranche, Cette, 

 and at New Haven and Beaufort in 

 the United States ; whilst a large 

 laboratory, on a scale to compare 

 with that at Naples, has been (1888) 

 opened at Plymouth by the Marine 

 Biological Association of the United 

 Kingdom " (Ray Lankester, art. 

 " Zoology " in ' Encyclop. Brit.,' vol. 

 xxiv. p. 814). 



