1912] Ritter: The Marine Biological Station of San Diego — 233 
instance, it is becoming clear that wider instruction on sex 
matters is imperative, and that parents and the home primarily, 
and the school secondarily, must be looked to for the broader, 
better knowledge. Again, the simply incalculable power of the 
press and the speaker’s platform for educating and influencing 
the voting part of the population are recognized and resorted to 
upon occasion. 
I may now state my views summarily: Biological science, as 
now developed, contains numerous facts and generalizations of 
very great moment to the higher intellectual and spiritual life 
of the people generally. The essence of all these can be stated in 
language readily comprehensible to persons of average intelli- 
gence and education. Most if not all these facts and generaliza- 
tions are of such nature as to make their strongest appeal to the 
majority of people only from their bearings on problems of 
personal experience, so that in the nature of the case they can 
be of living interest and significance to such persons only after 
the period of formal schooling is past and the business of actual 
living is on. Instruction concerning them must, consequently, 
be given by other means than the school. Some of the most 
important instrumentalities for such instruction are the botanical 
and zoological garden, the natural history museum, the aquarium, 
the library, the lecture platform, and in some ways most im- 
portant of all, the public press. 
And now for the culminating point: In the main the instruc- 
tion given through all these instrumentalities must be by pro- 
fessional biologists. It will never be done well, that is, in a 
manner at the same time vivacious, convineing, and dependable, 
by persons who have merely ‘‘read up’’ on biology with nothing 
but an elementary training to start from. Only persons con- 
stantly occupied with the first-hand gathering of data, with the 
making and testing of hypotheses, and with the submitting of 
results and conclusions to fellow-workers for eriticism and 
verification, can do the safest teaching in these ways. 
Here comes not only the opportunity but the obligation of 
those whose vocation is in research institutions. The university 
teacher may generally be considered to have done his share 
when in addition to his research work he has instructed his 
