456 



SCIENCE 



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



it seems to me that they were only the ex- 

 pression of an impulse, unconscious per- 

 haps to Dohrn, to bring those powers into 

 play, which as privatdozent, he would be 

 forced to suppress. He longed to create 

 something great all his own, to wander on 

 new and untrodden paths. This desire 

 showed itself in his earlier project to be- 

 come a publisher, as it was his wish to 

 choose a field of practical activity affording 

 full play for his intellectual talents. When 

 the earlier indifference towards the adopted 

 science had been changed into enthusiasm, 

 this impulse, as a matter of course, chose 

 for its objective, zoology. Beginning with 

 taxonomy, imbued with Darwinian theories 

 and accepting transmutation as a physi- 

 ological problem, he had already gained a 

 comprehensive view of the needs of his 

 science. He had ever before his eyes the 

 lesson the sea had taught some of his for- 

 tunate predecessors, especially as recorded 

 in the brilliant results of Johannes Miil- 

 ler's work. His own experience had often 

 shown him how much more advantageously 

 these marine organisms could be iitilized if 

 the experimenter, hurrying from inland to 

 the coast for a short season, found there 

 even a primitive laboratory. The found- 

 ing of a marine zoological station offered 

 the needed medium for the expression of 

 this strongly felt impulse to develop his 

 great personal powers. 



In the winter of 1870, Dohrn went to 

 Naples, hoping to realize his plan, but the 

 negotiations entered into were soon inter- 

 rupted by war which recalled the young 

 officer to Cassell (on account of an earlier 

 illness he had been transferred to the re- 

 serves). In the fall of 1871 Dohrn re- 

 moved permanently to Naples, and forth- 

 with began the great constructive period of 

 his life. To-day the biologist comes to 

 Naples and sees the Zoological Station 

 standing in the public gardens, of which it 



is almost an integral part. On going to 

 work he finds not only the material for his 

 experiments, but apparently everything 

 needful for their elaboration, even compli- 

 cated and specialized equipment being 

 brought to him with business-like prompt- 

 ness. In addition he has easy access to a 

 library of such completeness as nowhere 

 else could be at his disposal — in brief, when 

 the oceupany of a Naples table, a veritable 

 "Tischlein deckt dich" allows him to con- 

 centrate his thought entirely on his work, 

 he accepts all in its completeness with- 

 out realizing the indescribable toil and self- 

 sacrifice with which this now perfect insti- 

 tution has been brought into existence. 

 And I too must confess that even though I 

 had known the station in its beginnings and 

 had read and heard much as to its origin, 

 it was first through the manuscripts left by 

 Dohrn in which he speaks of the formative 

 years that it became clear to me what cour- 

 age, what self-denial, what inexhaustible 

 patience, what an intimate acquaintance 

 with the most varied realms of knowledge, 

 what an art for grasping situations and 

 handling men, had been brought into play 

 in this creation. Dohrn himself, speaking 

 twenty years later of this time, said: 



It now often seems to me as though like a sleep- 

 walker I had safely passed all the pitfalls that lay 

 on either side of my way. Without a model as 

 precedent, with entirely insufficient pecuniary re- 

 sources, absolutely without business knowledge, in 

 a foreign land, of whose language I knew little or 

 nothing, I signed an agreement with the authori- 

 ties of the city which of all others in Italy is the 

 most difficult to administer. From the time of the 

 first negotiations in the city hall in Naples, in 

 November, 1870, to the opening of the station in 

 February, 1874, I passed through an Odyssey of 

 wanderings. 



Do we hear in these words the approach 

 of that period in life when in retrospection 

 one doubts the power of youth (even one's 

 own) to have accomplished what has been 



