SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. 797 



for light, ventilation, and cleansing. All the ordinary laboratory 

 rooms are supplied with aquarium equipment. The two chief 

 designs of the laboratory may be categorically expressed : (1) to 

 provide material for the extension of physiological investigation 

 to the whole animal kingdom and even to the plant world ; (2) to 

 provide opportunity for studying the effect of all environmental 

 conditions singly upon living forms. The importance of these is 

 manifest. Physiologists have been too much inclined to learn 

 their lessons from man alone, or from man and a few of the 

 higher mammals. Certain processes, however, absent or obscure 

 in man, are present or better denned in some other forms. Phe- 

 nomena vary with types : one is at its best in one species, another 

 in another; a wide range, therefore, of forms is necessary. In 

 studying the effects of environment it is desirable, so far as pos- 

 sible, to isolate the elements of which it is composed. It is an 

 easy matter to attribute an effect to the wrong factor in the sur- 

 roundings. The Physiological Laboratory is in a sense an ex- 

 pression of its head, Prof. Jacques Loeb. Dr. Loeb was trained 

 in the most important laboratories of Europe, and his investiga- 

 tions therein were of extreme interest. His study of heliotrop- 

 ism demonstrated that the tendency of plants to turn sunward 

 was the same thing as the impulse which drives the moth to the 

 flame ; that there is no more psychical activity in the latter than 

 in the former. His later investigations into the mechanism of 

 geotropism, or the tendency to turn or grow toward the earth, 

 and other kindred phenomena, amplified and further illustrated 

 these conclusions. His curious investigation into heteromorpho- 

 sis substitution of one organ by another, transformation of one 

 organ into another was really an outgrowth of these studies. 

 The importance of the results of the whole series is illustrated 

 in a recent article by Dr. Loeb upon egg structure and the he- 

 redity of instincts. Recognition that much of what has hereto- 

 fore been considered psychical in instinct is merely the necessary 

 result of chemical actions and the mechanical operations pro- 

 duced by them, given external combinations of conditions being 

 present, greatly simplifies the conception of egg structure, and 

 relieves us of some of the embarrassingly complicated concep- 

 tions in certain of Weismann's later theories. 



The Botanical Laboratory, under Prof. Coulter's direct super- 

 vision, is the fourth of this striking cluster of buildings. The 

 most notable feature is the greenhouse in the roof. From below 

 it appears small, but it probably measures something like seventy 

 by thirty feet. It serves two excellent ends : (a) it supplies mate- 

 rial at every stage of growth for laboratory use; (6) it fur- 

 nishes all kinds of conditions for experimentation. The arrange- 

 ments for control in temperature and moisture are nearly perfect. 



