1912] Ritter: The Marine Biological Station of San Diego — 223 
V. THE QUESTION OF MAKING THE STATION AVAILABLE TO 
VISITING INVESTIGATORS 
This is of great importance. Even though the idea upon 
which the institution immediately rests does not require us to 
consider it, yet the larger aims of biology will not allow it to go 
unheeded. From a strictly business standpoint the course we 
have followed and are following is nothing less than absurd. 
Unquestionably the work done by Child on the growth-capacity 
of the anemone Harenactis, and by Jennings on the activity 
capacities of the starfish Asterias, is not surpassed in scientific 
value by any yet done at the station. Yet when comparison is 
made between the cost of these investigations dealing with 
creatures than can be picked up on the shore with almost no 
effort, and others of approximately equal scope carried out as 
part of the station’s regular oceanic-survey programme, the dis- 
crepaney against the programme work is seen to be so great as 
to make one fairly gasp when looking at the case from the busi- 
ness point of view. And the gasping is not likely to be alleviated 
by the reflection that in all probability, had the original aim 
been to promote work on the basis on which Child’s and particu- 
larly Jenning’s was done, the total output might have been 
increased in nearly the proportion that the cost of the programme 
work bears to the cost of independent work, the expenditure 
remaining what it has actually been. There is one way of justify- 
ing such a financially absurd situation that most men (men of 
science at any rate) would readily accept as sufficient, namely, by 
insisting that the valuation of knowledge of nature in terms of 
money is only one way, and that the least important, of estimat- 
ing its worth. But this justification does not fully reach the 
present case. How justify the expenditure of large sums on a 
particular kind of scientific research when even less expenditure 
on another rather closely related kind, of no less intrinsic im- 
portance, will produce much larger returns? Justification in 
this case must be found by considerations that le wholly within 
the realms of knowledge values; that is, that disregard money 
as a measuring stick. The justification comes easy and ample, 
according to my view, in the proposition that the widest gen- 
