Biological Institutions 71 



not carry away with him a memory and an inspiration? A 

 memory of the "hole" with its foaming eddies, of the "eel- 

 pond" with its landing stage and launches, and the "stone 

 building" where the genial head of the supply department 

 presides over an incongruous medley of flopping dogfish, five- 

 rayed starfish and bristling sea urchins, which the "Caya- 

 detta" has just brought in from the fish trap in Buzzard's 

 Bay, or dredged from the rocky bottom of Vineyard Sound. 

 A. memory of wind swept heath, where the song sparrow 

 rears it brood, of gently curving beach, white shining in the 

 summer's sun; of rocky headlands, where the seaweeds grow 

 and the sea anemone clings fast to its home uncovered by the 

 falling tide; of the lighthouse on the point and the buoy 

 with its never silent bell ; of white sails upon the Sound, and 

 the dim shores of Martha's Vineyard fading into the soft 

 gray blue of the summer haze and sky. An inspiration of 

 the bigness of things, of all there is to do and the joy of doing, 

 of knowledge sought for the sake of knowing, a touch of the 

 fire from the altar of Penikese, lit by the hand of Agassiz, 

 the master. 



Fast following the pioneer of biological stations in 

 America came a number of lesser stations, at first along the 

 Atlantic seaboard, and later in the Mississippi Valley, on the 

 shores of the Pacific, and in the Rocky Mountains. These, 

 for the most part, have been merely summer schools conducted 

 in conjunction with the department of biology in some college 

 or university. In some however notably La Jolla, Calif., 

 Havana, 111., and Casco Bay, Me., the emphasis has been 

 placed upon research, and much original work of great value 

 has been done. The first of these, under the title of the 

 Scripps Institution for Biological Research, because of the 

 generous patronage of a wealthy La Jolla family, is an 

 adjunct of the Department of Zoology of the University of 

 California. In the earlier years of its existence it was, so to 

 speak, a traveling laboratory, occupying temporary quarters 

 at various points on the California Coast and finally locating 

 permanently at La Jolla. The Scripps Institution is one of 

 the few biological stations in the country whose physical 

 equipment is adequate to the work it tries to do. The 

 laboratory building is simple, almost to harshness in its 

 architecture, in fitting harmony with the barren landscape 

 round about ; but its interior appointments and equipment are 

 very complete. Its principal efforts thus far have been 

 directed to the study of the smaller marine animals or 

 plankton of the southern California Coast, and the factors 

 in their environment which determine their distribution, but 

 attention has also been turned in recent years to certain land 



