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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVI. No. 928 



as eighty investigators busily occupied, and 

 a tour of inspection from room to room in 

 reality carries him through the whole range 

 of biology. In the course of thirty-six 

 years many embryonic biologists have been 

 attracted here to study for the first time the 

 wonders of marine life. Here investigators 

 have come from every civilized land, be- 

 cause the scientific problems they had in 

 mind could nowhere else be studied to such 

 advantage. How many hours of happy 

 work, how much of the joy attending dis- 

 covery, has this building seen ! The tables 

 of the station have been occupied more than 

 2,000 times, while the number of scientific 

 experiments either originating or deriving 

 their inspiration here can not be estimated. 

 Add to this total all that the station itself 

 has contributed to scientific work ; the help 

 given to zoological investigators by the 

 Jahresbericht; the material supplied for 

 museums throughout the world, as well as 

 for teaching purposes, and last but not 

 least recall the fact that this institution 

 since its foundation has served as model 

 and inspiration for the establishment of 

 zoological stations in many different coun- 

 tries. Remembering all this, we can but 

 echo the words of the address delivered at 

 the station's International Jubilee Celebra- 

 tion in 1897 : 



We can not imagine what the position of the 

 biological sciences would be at this time had the 

 far-reaching influence of the station been elim- 

 inated. 



Should we wish to express as briefly as 

 possible what this influence has been we 

 would say that Dohrn's Station first made 

 the study of marine life practical. For a 

 long time occasional soundings had been 

 made by a few persons, and they had re- 

 vealed the hidden treasure. Similar insti- 

 tutions were established about the same time 

 as Dohrn's by contemporary leaders in the 

 field of zoology, Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers 



and, in America, Louis Agassiz, not to 

 mention other smaller undertakings. But 

 in making the great treasure available 

 Dohrn was the first, and this marks the 

 importance of his work in comparison with 

 all others. In this we have an objective 

 measure of his work. Bach one of us, 

 profiting by the studies made at the Naples 

 Station and conscious of having added an- 

 other stone to the growing structure of our 

 knowledge, must imagine his own part in- 

 creased a thousandfold, if he is to measure 

 the entire scientific contribution made pos- 

 sible by Dohrn's creative genius. With 

 this in mind we must realize how immeas- 

 urable was the influence he exerted on biol- 

 ogy. Not only does time fail me, but I am 

 not in the possession of the facts necessary 

 to follow in detail the course of the newer 

 streams of knowledge arising in the zoolog- 

 ical station, and spreading out over the 

 most widely separated fields of biology. I 

 shall direct your attention to only one 

 branch in the wide field of enquiry carried 

 on in the station, namely, that which may 

 be described under the head of causal 

 morphology. Judged by what has been 

 gained in the study of marine organisms 

 and realizing that without the opportuni- 

 ties offered by these stations the results 

 would have been unattainable, the part 

 taken by the oldest and largest of these 

 institutions at one of the most critical 

 moments in the history of our science en- 

 titles it to the highest reward. 



Anton Dohrn, the man to whom we owe 

 all this, was born December 29, 1840, in 

 Stettin, now almost seventy years ago. 

 When one hears his father's personality 

 described there is no doubt that the son 

 resembled him in outward appearance and 

 inherited from him what was best in his 

 parent's character. The possession of 

 ample means permitted the elder Dohrn to 

 order his life according to his inclinations. 



