1912] Ritter: The Marine Biological Station of San Diego 145 
along, seen and unseen, even unforeseeable factors work together 
to produce the results actually reached. 
The fact about San Francisco Bay that was recognized at 
once to be severely against it as headquarters for researches on 
marine biology was the absence from nearly all of its waters of 
the most characteristic oceanic animals and plants. This 
absence, which applies to the whole bay excepting the Golden 
Gate where the water runs with such fury at every change of 
the tide as to render working in it with small boats extremely 
difficult and hazardous, is due to the nearly land-locked nature 
of the bay and the discharge into it of the two large rivers, the 
Sacramento and the San Joaquin, with their heavy loads of 
sediment. 
The circumstances that were destined to lead to greater and 
greater emphasis on problems essentially involving the life and 
physical conditions of the open ocean, which problems would in 
turn be so greatly favored by the conditions far to the south, 
were not at all clearly seen at the outset. Beyond the two early 
determinations that faunal studies must, at least at the begin- 
ning, play a large part in whatever might be our undertakings, 
and that a working place at some suitable point on the seashore 
proper would be essential, the main alternatives in policy and 
in method were but imperfectly seen. Assuming such a station 
assured, should its purpose be exclusively research, exclusively 
the formal instruction of elementary students, or a combination 
of the two? Should it aim at being a convenient work-place to 
which investigators from whatever source might go from time 
to time as individual needs might prompt, or should definitely 
correlated researches by the station as such, be aimed at? Should 
effort be confined to the shore life, or to the free-swimming and 
floating life, or should all, with no favors to any, be included in 
the programme? These and various other questions in the light 
of the meager experience to begin with could be but vaguely 
asked and more vaguely answered. Special local conditions and 
experiences gradually indicated the course which it seemed best 
to steer with reference to most of them. 
Important as is the instruction of youth in biology, since 
provisions for this already existed ir the two universities, in 
