ii University of CaUfornia Publications in Zoology [Vol. 15 



not only glad but eager to give visiting naturalists opportunity for 

 prosecuting their own researches, and special phases of general biology 

 are studied from time to time. It is realized, however, that the ideal 

 sought can be approached only by a programme of research which 

 involves highly specialized and intimately co-ordinated investigations 

 on particular and restricted problems concerning the structure, develop- 

 ment, function, behavior, etc., of particular species of marine organ- 

 isms. But even such specialized investigations can be included in the 

 Institution 's marine programme only when subordinated to the larger 

 problem of understanding the sum total of the phenomena of marine 

 plants and animals. 



Necessarily, this programme demands thorough investigation of 

 the conditions under which marine organisms live. Knowledge of the 

 environment is as indispensable to a complete understanding of marine 

 organisms as is that of the organisms themselves. "Conditions of 

 the water as to temperature and currents; mineral, gaseous, and 

 albuminoid content, etc., must be known at the particular time and 

 place to which the biological studies pertain." (Ritter. 1905. p. ix.) 

 Chemistry, physics, and hydrography are therefore as indispensable 

 in understanding any marine organism as is morphology, embryology, 

 or physiology. Some biologists, however, hesitate to admit this, not 

 recognizing that their attitude is equivalent to claiming that a marine 

 organism can be completely understood without taking into account 

 its most characteristic quality — its marineness, so to speak. 



It has been impossible, thus far, for the Institution to conduct 

 chemical investigations on the environment of marine organisms, but 

 much time has been devoted to physical and hydrographical research. 

 Since 1908, when intensive hydrographic research was begun, more 

 than four thousand observations of salinity and density have been made 

 and nearly five thousand surface and subsurface temperatures have 

 been taken within one hundred miles of the coast and between Point 

 Conception (34° 30' N) on the north and Los Coronados (32° 10' N) 

 on the .south. Within this area two himdred and sixty arbitrarily 

 delimited rectangular "sections." each five minutes on a side, have 

 been investigated, more than five hundred hydrographic observations 

 having been made in some. But this is insufficient. Knowledge of 

 the typical, average, and extreme physical conditions in temperature, 

 density, salinity, and current in each "section," at all depths, at all 

 hours of the day, during each month, and during each of a series of 

 years, is needed to supply an adequate foundation for detailed con- 



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