Biological Institutions 51 



middle of the last century. After the impelling influence of 

 these two great teachers, it has made a lusty growth. In early 

 days the college professor was supposed to be as many sided 

 as the country "school marm" of the present day and genera- 

 tion. No man was sufficiently well educated to occupy a 

 professor's chair unless he was an authority in at least two 

 major sciences, while the idea of a professor confining liis 

 attention to a single branch of one of these sciences was 

 unheard of. Today all our great universities have two en- 

 tirely separate departments of l^iology (botany and zoology) 

 each with a staff of from five to ten or more members, each 

 one of whom has in charge his own particular branch of the 

 subject. To appreciate the multiplicity of modern science 

 one need but turn to any recent program of a scientific society 

 where the papers are arranged by subjects. Thus at the 1921 

 meeting of the American Society of Zoologists there were 

 papers presented in the following branches of zoology : embry- 

 ology, cytology, parasitology^ evolution, genetics, ecology, dis- 

 tribution, general physiology, and comparative anatomy. The 

 average college catalog contains such a "feast of fat things" 

 as to impair the digestion of even the most voracious of stu- 

 dent "sharks." 



But with the passing of the "good old days" when every 

 college "prof" was supposed to be a "walking encyclopedia" 

 has come a far more exacting age for teacher and investigator 

 alike, for modern standards of success demand of both a far 

 more encyclopedic knowledge of science, than was expected 

 of their forbears. The inter-relations of the many branches 

 of science, and their intimate dependence one upon the other,, 

 demands a much more extensive, and withal exact knowledge 

 of their subject on the part of biologists today, than was 

 needed in the past. Especially is this true in the field of 

 experimental biology, which has made such remarkable strides 

 in the last two decades, and which employs as its handmaidens 

 its sister sciences of chemistry and physics. Today indeed 

 chemistiy and biology are united in the new science of bio- 

 chemistry, one which, for possibility of discovery of the most 

 elusive secrets of nature, gives more promise than any other 

 field of scientific quest and conquest. 



With this ever increasing specialization and complexity of 

 biology (and the same is no less true of other sciences) have 

 come ever increasing demands for equipment on the means 

 of our higher institutions of learning. Time was when the 

 biological laboratory was considered equipped if it possessed 

 a few old microscopes, hand lenses and dissecting instruments, 

 a little glassware, a few chemicals and some pickled caricatures 

 of things which were once alive. Today the work shop and 



