September 20, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



387 



tion, viz., the campaign for a larger and better 

 building site necessitated by enlarged ideas 

 and purposes for the future of the station, are 

 a far greater good than any sort of an earlier 

 dedication could have been. 



The Work of the Summer.— The paid staff 

 for the season consists of thirteen, five of 

 whom are full-fledged naturalists and eight 

 are their assistants. In addition seven " ac- 

 commodated " workers are at the laboratory. 



Dr. J. F. McClendon, of Randolph-Macon 

 College, Va., has been employed as resident 

 naturalist for the coming year. 



No one beyond the Rockies was asked to 

 come to the station this summer. The reasons 

 were several for setting aside this once this 

 especially stimulating and profitable feature 

 of the policy of the directorate. When it be- 

 came obvious that the little green laboratory 

 building would have to do for the summer's 

 work, consideration of the sardine-like con- 

 dition of things that would be inevitable 

 among the workers, strongly disfavored the 

 alluring of strangers into the pack. Again, 

 uncertainty as to whether the new boat would 

 be in operation for any part of the season 

 argued in favor of restricting operations to 

 tasks already in hand which could be prose- 

 cuted to best advantage with the limited 

 means for collecting that might have to be 

 relied upon. Finally the probability that any 

 naturalists we should care to ask would wish 

 to attend the International Zoological Con- 

 gress which met in Boston, August 19-23, 

 did not favor an appeal to easterners. 



Testing of Policy. — The policy of compen- 

 sating professional naturalists for carrying on 

 a scheme of investigation definitely under- 

 taken by a marine biological station as a 

 whole is an experiment until now untried, so 

 far as I know. The plan is in its fifth year 

 of testing here at the San Diego station. 

 This period should be sufficient to give some 

 intimation of its feasibility and productive- 

 ness. Fathers and mothers are not the most 

 reliable judges of the virtues of their own 

 children. It would be unprofitable for us of 

 this association who have undertaken the ex- 

 periment to indulge now, in the absence of 



anybody to criticize, in commendatory re- 

 marks on what has been accomplished. It 

 will be enough to look for a moment at the 

 balance sheet of outgo and results. 



From 1903, our first year under the present 

 order, up to this summer's work approximately 

 $6,000 have been paid in salaries to naturalists 

 and their assistants. 



The product of this outlay stated numeric- 

 ally in terms of the printer's art is as fol- 

 lows: Twenty-three miemoirs, aggregating Y68 

 pages of the zoological publications of the 

 University of California, large octavo in size, 

 have been published. The manuscripts of two 

 other memoirs, one of about 150 pages and the 

 other of probably 50, are in the editor's hands 

 awaiting their turn at the University Press. 

 There naturally has not been time for the 

 present summer's work to contribute anything. 



No one would, of course, lay much store on 

 this bulk method of estimating the value of 

 the returns for the expenditure. The major 

 part, though by no means all of what has 

 been printed, is concerned with the descrip- 

 tion and record of organisms living in our 

 area which before were almost wholly un- 

 known. Some 518 kinds of organisms have 

 been studied critically so far as the needs of 

 identification and record are concerned. Of 

 this number 106 have been treated by their 

 authors as new to science, i. e., have been 

 described as new species. It is fair to assert, 

 I believe, that as a result of these four years' 

 work, some at least of the animal groups in- 

 habiting our waters are better known to sci- 

 ence than are the same groups of the Atlantic 

 shores of the United States, where marine 

 laboratories have existed and marine collect- 

 ing has been practised for forty years at least. 



It certainly would have been impossible to 

 accomplish more than a small fraction of 

 what has been done, but for the method that 

 has prevailed and with the money to back it. 

 Whether or not the knowledge gained is worth 

 what it has cost I am willing to leave to the 

 contributors of the funds and to the intelli- 

 gent public. 



Another aspect of the policy that I can not 

 refrain from devoting a few sentences to is 



