1912) Ritter: The Marine Biological Station of San Diego 141 
achieved’’ be not passed by entirely. To do so would be to miss 
much of the real essence of any part. No one can hope to get 
more than a modicum of the good possible in general knowledge 
of the results of scientific research, without giving some attention 
to the methods by which the results are obtained. This consid- 
eration has led to the inclusion in the account of an amount 
of detail about the equipment and workings of the station’s 
boat, the ‘‘ Alexander Agassiz,’’ that would otherwise probably 
have been left out. 
Another matter of great moment for general, hardly less 
than for special information, is the vital way in which such 
enterprises are dependent upon the combined efforts of a number 
of persons. In any considerable undertaking the dependence 
of every one upon every other one is so commonplace a fact 
that the fundamentality of it it likely to be less reflected on 
than it ought to be. With the two-fold purpose of giving infor- 
mation as to who have been most active in the development of 
this particular institution, and of encouraging more general 
recognition of the fact that all such enterprises are in very 
essence partly individual and partly communal, I have aimed 
throughout to keep persons rather than inanimate things to the 
front, and have endeavored not to leave any one unmentioned 
who has contributed significantly to the results. The larger 
number of those who fall into this category are referred to 
under headings dealing with the particular work they have done. 
But a few individuals have been so intimately connected with 
many aspects of the station’s growth and work that they must 
be spoken of here. 
The operations of the ‘‘Agassiz’’ as set forth under the 
appropriate headings would have been impossible but for Mr. 
Ellis L. Michael and Captain W. C. Crandall, they having been 
responsible for most of the methods actually employed. By this 
I do not mean that these men and no others are competent for 
this work. but that the undertaking is such as to demand the 
combined efforts of several persons; that into their hands fell this 
important part of the programme; and that they proved equal 
to the task. Similarly into the general working plans of the 
station are woven the suggestions, the ideas, and the activities 
