52i 



NATURE 



[Oct 



OUKR 27, 1 9 10 



the Bureau's " Division of Scientific Inquin'," the otlier 

 the hatching station, maintained by the " Division of t'ish 

 Culture." These two establishments are under different 

 heads, and are, so far as possible, independent of one 

 another, though they to a large extent share the same 

 buildings. The biological laboratory, in the general scope 

 of its work, does not differ widely from the other leading 

 marine laboratories of the world. It is true that greater 

 emphasis is laid upon the economic aspect of marine 

 biology, and a number of investigators are each year 

 employed by the Bureau to conduct researches upon such 

 subjects as the food value and chemical composition of 

 marine organisms, or upon problems directly related to 

 the natural history of food fishes ; but to say that investi- 

 gations are restricted to such lines is to do great violence 

 to the facts. The Bureau has always put a liberal con- 

 struction upon the word " practical," realising that no 

 hard-and-fast line should be drawn between pure and 

 applied science, and regarding all information as ultimately 

 useful which gives us a deeper insight into the life of the 

 sea. 



The two biological laboratories at A\'oods Hole — the 

 " Marine Biological Laboratory " and that of the Bureau 

 of Fisheries — have worked together side by side since the 

 establishment of the former in 18S8. The choice of its 

 name by the privately supported institution has — un- 

 intentionally, of course — been the source of much of the 

 misapprehension of which I am speaking. The name. 



The Marine Biological Laboratory," would seem to 

 imply an exclusive occupancy of this field, whereas the 

 United States Fish Commission was conducting biological 

 work at Woods Hole as early as 1871, and its present 

 laboratory building was erected in 1885. 



Another source of misconception is the fact that the 

 Fisheries Laboratory has no definite organ of publication. 

 Its scientific results, so far as they are economic or 

 faunistic, or in any way related to the natural history of 

 the sea, are in a large measure published in the Bulletin 

 of the Bureau of Fisheries. The results in other fields of 

 work are embodied in papers — and the number of these 

 is great — scattered through all our various biological 

 journals in this country and abroad. On the other hand 

 there exists the " Biological Bulletin," which is the official 

 organ of the Marine Biological Laboratory, though it also 

 accepts contributions from workers in all parts of our 

 country, oftentimes including those in the Fisheries Labora- 

 tory at Woods Hole. It is needless to add that the 

 Marine Biological Laboratory does not make the least 

 pretence that this journal represents its own output in any 

 exclusive sense. 



But, after all, the main source of confusion relative to 

 the two laboratories at Woods Hole is the fact that the 

 biologists there form a single scientific community, the 

 members of which mingle freely together without regard 

 to their place of work. In fact, the same investigator may 

 work one year in one laboratory, the next year in the 

 other, or he may even hold tables in both simultaneously ; 

 and so the reading public lumps together all our produc- 

 tions as Woods Hole work, and draws no fine distinctions. 

 In the circumstances, it is natural that the laboratory 

 which bears the name of " 7he Marine Biological Labora- 

 tory " should be frequently credited with the entire out- 

 put. This is written in no spirit of resentment, but merely 

 as an explanation of the prevalence of this widespread mis- 

 conception of the situation at Woods Hole. 



It will be cheerfully granted that the " Marine Bio- 

 logical Laboratory " accommodates a much larger number 

 of investigators — perhaps twice as many, on the average — 

 as does its sister institution ; and it is not likely that any- 

 one connected with either laboratory fails to recognise 

 that a considerably greater output of scientific results 

 must at present be credited to the former. On the other 

 liand, the Government laboratory had, until recently, the 

 only really efficient steam vessels available for scientific 

 researcli, and has had other decided advantages in its 

 pliNsical equipment. But wo at Woods Hole waste little 

 lime in idle comparisons such as these. Most of us ru'e 

 too busy endeavouring to m.'ike an occasional contriliution 

 to our common science. 



Whether or not the two laboratories will continue to 

 cover so largely the same field of activity it remains for 

 NO. 2139, VOL. 84] 



the future to decide. These are some good arguments fur 

 a greater division of labour than at present exists. 



Francis B. Sumneu. 

 (Director, Biological Laboratory of the 

 U.S. Bureau of Fisheries at Woods 

 Hole, Mass.) 

 Washington, D.C., October 12. 



The Cocos-Keeling Atoll. 



I CONSIDER myself fortunate that the author of the 

 review of " Coral and Atolls," which appeared in Nature 

 of October 6, has addressed two direct questions to me, 

 for in the answering of these questions it may be possible 

 to open in a more frank manner the discussion of those 

 problems with which I have dealt, and which are to be 

 solved by dispassionate argument and investigation rather 

 than by anonymous destructive criticism. 



The first question which the reviewer puts to me is 

 couched in the following form : he rightly asserts that I 

 assume the lagoon of an atoll to be a slightly submerged 

 reef, and then he asks, " Why this assumption without 

 evidence? " For answer I would point out that the 

 evidence is given freely in the work which he reviews 

 (notably at pp. 251-2, and elsewhere), and, since he has 

 apparently overlooked it, I will repeat that it consists, 

 among other things, of the fact that submerged atoll- 

 shaped reefs, and reefs also atoll-shaped, but of which 

 some portion of the outer rim is awash, or on which some 

 island debris is piled, are well-known geographical facts. 

 The central part of the submerged reef forms the lagoon 

 of the developed atoll, which is therefore not inaptly 

 described as a " slightly submerged reef." 



His second question is in connection with the mode of 

 formation of atolls from the disintegration of high oceanic 

 islands surrounded by a barrier reef. He asks me how I 

 would explain " .Xgassiz's wonderful series of photographs 

 of Fijian islands within barrier reefs " when I state that 

 " the picture of the high island towards the completion 

 of the process, when, after having stood resisting in a 

 troubled sea, it so conveniently crumbles to pieces within 

 the calm of an encircling b.arrier reef, appears to me to 

 be contrary to all natural laws." I would give as ex- 

 planation the very obvious suggestion that the formations 

 illustrated (I presume in Bull. Mus. Conip. Zool. Harv., 

 vol. xxxiii.) are not the outcome of the development of 

 the barrier reef, for similar conditions are found, quite 

 apart from any coral structures, all over the world, the 

 coast-lines of islands in northern seas providing equally 

 good examples. 



It may perhaps be permissible to extend this reply so 

 as to embrace the answers to some assertions of the 

 reviewer regarding corals and coral islands, and to point 

 out some misquotations from the work under discussion 

 and some misconceptions of its conclusions. 



The variability of the growth forms of corals is one of 

 the problems discussed, and I have urged that sediment — 

 as a factor of the environment — is a potent cause of 

 modified coral growth. That the environment as a whole, 

 and not merely the presence of silt, was considered, may 

 be gleaned from the discussion of the growth of young 

 colonies of Pocillopora (p. 100). 



The reviewer turns from this to observe that the vari.'i- 

 bility of corals " may aptly be compared to the growth 

 shown by our forest trees in different environments. Reef 

 corals, too, resemble trees in that they are largely 

 dependent for their food on chlorophyll, which is present 

 in minute algre living in their digestive cavities. The 

 coloration of most reef corals is largely due to these algie, 

 and their mode of growth is sympathetic to them in that 

 the coral skeleton is deposited so as to expose the polyps 

 to the maximum amount of light." The reviewer then 

 adds, " .Such appear to us the ordinary views of 

 zoologists." 



The only logical meaning that I can attach to this is 

 that zoologists as a class ordinarilv believe that the varia- 

 bility of the growth forms of corals — and of forest trees — 

 is due to the fact that they contain chlorophyll in their 

 tissues. That zoologists as a class would subscribe to this 

 thesis appears to me unlikely, and the reviewer has yet 



