Biological Institutions 



83 



Australia, to study how the world is made, at least that part 

 of it contributed by corals. 



While our knowledge of the structure of the human body is 

 more complete than that of any other animal, our information 

 regarding- the beginnings of man is extremely fragmentary. 

 As a matter of fact our knowledge of man's earliest stages 

 is a blank. The reasons for this state of affairs are sufficiently 

 evident. For many years anatomists have been striving to 



The Yacht, "Anton Dohrn, " of the Carnegie Station on the Tor- 



TUGAs Islands 



Named after the founder and life-long head of the world-famous 

 station at Naples, Italy. 



Courtesi/ of Dr. A. O. Mayer, Director of the Tortufjas Station. 



supply the deficiencies in our knowledge by collecting human 

 embryos and fetuses, and one of the leaders in this eifort was 

 the late Professor ]\lall of Johns Hopkins University. In the 

 course of many years Professor Mall brought together some 

 2,000 embryos and fetuses, and his studies of them have 

 thrown light, not so much on the unknown stages of human 

 development, as upon many curious malformations in man, 

 which are apt to occur in the material which the anatomist 

 secures, and knowledge of the causes of which are of the high- 



