xii Vniversity of California Publications in Zoology [Vol. 15 



Though true, says the experimentalist partisan, this is an obviously 

 impracticable ideal ; and while such problems cannot, perhaps, be 

 "wholly settled in the laboratory," their really essential features can 

 be satisfactorily worked out by the experimental method. Laboratory 

 experiments have demonstrated the physiological mechanism of re- 

 spon.se involved in many reflex actions, instincts, and habits, and have 

 greatly clarified our vision as to the probable origin of memory, reason, 

 and other complex functions of consciousness. Indeed, the literature 

 of animal behavior abounds in such terms as phototaxis, geotaxis, 

 thermotaxis, and chemotaxis, all of which pay tribute to the ingenious 

 achievements of laboratory experiments. Do not the results justify 

 the claim that all really essential knowledge concerning the relation 

 between marine organisms and their environments can be more accur- 

 ately and much more expeditiously ascertained by subjecting a few 

 typical organisms to laboratory experiments than by investigations 

 prosecuted in the ocean itself? Does not the laboratory method 

 eliminate the expense and time-consuming task of analyzing hydro- 

 graphically hundreds upon hundreds of water-samples? 



Experiments conducted in a laboratory are and always will be in- 

 dispensable but, after all has been said, they reveal only xvhat transpires 

 in a laboratory and are necessarily incapable of revealing tohat occurs 

 in, nature. Whitman's ideal, though impos-sible of complete realization, 

 could and would come much nearer realization than is at present the 

 ease were the indisputable fact more widely appreciated that no method 

 of laboratory experimentation can reveal the natural behavior of an 

 organism imless it is possible to re-create nature in miniature. Even 

 if certain environmental conditions can be reproduced in a laboratory, 

 the total complex cannot be duplicated. Certain stimuli occur in nature 

 which are necessarily absent in the laboratory, and others are probably 

 introduced in the laboratory which do not occur in nature. This is 

 particularly true with respect to the ocean. How, for instance, could 

 the stimuli associated with depth, distance from the coast, velocity of 

 current, or wave action be duplicated? Moreover, the nature of an 

 animal's response depends \ipon the duration as well as upon the 

 intensity of any particular stimulus, and upon other preceeding and 

 attendant .stimuli. This fact makes it obvious that laboratory experi- 

 ments can offer no reliable evidence concerning an animal's behavior 

 in nature. Says Yerkes (1914, p. 181) : 



It woulil appear to be self-eviflent, yet the attitude of many experimental 

 students of animal behavior seem to contradict the statement, that every 



