MORE WANDERINGS AND WORK 229 



find some interest in this sketch of the western Atlantic 

 off our shores. I have been nearly five years working 

 this up, and am not sorry to have this work behind me 

 and to be able to go back again to my Laboratory at 

 the seashore and my embryological work which I have 

 so long neglected. It was to me a bitter disappointment 

 not to be able to join the Albatross at Panama, but 

 owing to the severe and dangerous illness of my part- 

 ner I was obliged to remain in Cambridge, although the 

 Fish Commission kindly kept the steamer over at Panama 

 for more than ten days in hopes of giving me a chance 

 to go. But it was hopeless, and I shall have to be satis- 

 fied in working up a part of the collections, a very dif- 

 ferent thing from having had a share in securing them 

 on the spot, and catching and observing all the acces- 

 sories which give life and interest to such material. 



Weismann's speculations have interested us here to a 

 great degree, and I am desirous to see to what they will 

 lead. We are going ahead here constantly and enlarging 

 our facilities for the study of Natural History, and before 

 long I hope to see nearly all the plans laid out when I 

 first began to work here, carried out, at least so far that 

 it will be a comparatively easy task to finish the schemes 

 which were begun by my father, and which have grown 

 far beyond the wildest dreams he ever could have in- 

 dulged in. It has been to me a great satisfaction to have 

 the means to do so much for science here, and if the 

 mere administrative work of so large an establishment 

 has crippled to a certain extent my own scientific work, 

 I can still have the satisfaction of knowing that where 

 I alone might have been at work, there are now a dozen 

 in full activity. The general care of the University, 

 which has of late years taken so great a development, 



