BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY AT NAPLES 



as the true fisherman throws back the excess of his 

 catch. It is sport, not game, that he covets. 



THE LABORATORY AND ITS FOUNDER 



When one has made the circuit of the aquarium he 

 will have seen and marvelled at some hundreds of cu- 

 rious creatures utterly unlike anything to be found 

 above water. Brightly colored starfishes, beautiful 

 sea-urchins, strange stationary ascidians, and flower- 

 like sea-anemones, quaint sea-horses, and filmy, fragile 

 jellyfishes and their multiform kin all seem novel and 

 wonderful as one sees them in their native element. 

 Things that appear to be parts of the rocky or sandy 

 bed of the grottos startle one by moving about, and 

 thus discovering themselves as living creatures, simu- 

 lating their environment for purposes of protection. 

 Or perhaps what seems to be a giant snail suddenly 

 unfurls wings from its seeming shell, and goes waving 

 through the water, to the utter bewilderment of the 

 beholder. Such freaks as this are quite the rule among 

 the strange tribes of the deep, for the crowding of pop- 

 ulation there makes the struggle for existence keen, and 

 necessitates all manner of subterfuges for the preserva- 

 tion of species. 



Each and every one of the thirty-odd grottos will 

 repay long observation, even on the part of the most 

 casual visitor, and when one has seen them all, he will 

 know more at first hand of the method of life of the 

 creatures of the sea than all the books could teach him. 

 He will depart fully satisfied, and probably, if he be the 

 usual sight-seer, he will never suspect that what he has 

 seen is really but an incidental part of the institution 



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