BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY AT NAPLES 



any kind, there is one dominating personality, one 

 moving spirit. This is Dr. Anton Dohrn, founder of 

 the laboratory, and still its controller and director, 

 in name and in fact. 



More than twenty-five years ago Dr. Dohrn, then a 

 young man fresh from the universities of his native 

 Germany, discovered what he felt to be a real need in 

 the biological world. He was struck with the fact 

 that nowhere in the world could be found an establish- 

 ment affording good opportunities for the study of 

 marine life. Water covers three-fifths of the earth's 

 surface, as everybody knows, and everywhere this 

 water teems with life, so that a vast preponderance 

 of the living things of the globe find their habitat there. 

 Yet the student who might desire to make special 

 studies of this life would find himself balked at the 

 threshold for want of opportunity. 



It was no great thing to discover this paucity, which, 

 indeed, fairly beckoned the discoverer. The great 

 thing was to supply the deficiency, and this was what 

 Dr. Dohrn determined to do. He selected Naples as 

 the best location for the laboratory he proposed to 

 found, because of its climate and its location beside 

 the teeming waters of the Mediterranean. He organ- 

 ized a laboratory ; he called about him a corps of able 

 assistants; he made the Marine Biological Laboratory 

 at Naples famous, the Mecca of all biological eyes 

 throughout the world. It was not all done in a day. 

 It was far enough from being done without opposition 

 and discouragement; but these are matters of history 

 which Dr. Dohrn now prefers not to dwell upon. Suf- 

 fice it that the result aimed at was finally achieved, 



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