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SCIENCE. 



LN. .S. Vol. XVII. No. 442 



and permanent equipment — has cost within 

 $1,000. A one-story, wooden building, meas- 

 uring 24 X 43 feet on the ground, with sixteen 

 windows, stands directly on the rocky shore 

 a little to one side of a sandy beach. Inside, 

 the space is divided up into nine rooms for 

 investigators and a larger room accommo- 

 dating from six to ten more elementary stu- 

 dents. At either end are large double doors, 

 and the building is so oriented that in the 

 summer the prevailing southwest wind blows 

 straight through the laboratory, keeping the 

 temperature down on the warmest days. In 

 the past two years there has been but one day 

 when the thermometer has gone above 78° F. 

 in the laboratory. 



A considerable portion of the equipment is 

 taken each year from Tufts College, to which 

 institution the laboratory belongs, but there 

 is also something of permanent equipment. 

 Thus the laboratory owns two rowboats, 

 dredges, seines and tangles, abundant glass- 

 ware, several small microscopes, minor appa- 

 ratus and the nucleus of a library on mor- 

 phology and marine biology. The stock of 

 chemicals and reagents is large. It has not 

 yet been found possible to introduce running 

 water into the laboratory, but simple make- 

 shifts have made its absence less of a draw- 

 back than might be supposed possible. 



The laboratory was established with two 

 objects in view — to furnish a place where the 

 instructors and students of the college could 

 go for summer work, and, second — and this 

 far more important — to ascertain the suit- 

 ability of the location for a research station 

 for the northern fauna and flora. 



As is well known, there are three distinct 

 faunae on the Atlantic coast of North America 

 — a boreal, a temperate and a subtropical, the 

 last passing into the tropical at the southern 

 end of Florida. The boundaries between 

 these three faunae are approximately Cape Cod 

 and Cape Hatteras. For the middle or tem- 

 perate fauna there are already three well- 

 equipped biological stations — the Marine Bio- 

 logical Laboratory and the station of the U. 

 S. Fish Commission at Woods Hole, and the 

 Cold Spring Laboratory of the Brooklyn In- 



stitute on Long Island. For the southern 

 fauna there is only the recently erected sta- 

 tion of the U. S. Fish Commission at Beau- 

 fort, N. C. There certainly should be an- 

 other farther south, but, having no knowledge 

 of locations and conditions, I am not com- 

 petent to speak of the merits of the Tortugas 

 advocated in these pages by Dr. Mayer. For 

 the stretch of coast from Cape Cod to East- 

 port (and extending down into the provinces) 

 there is but the small Harpswell Laboratory. 



A few statistics will show the richness and 

 peculiarities of this northern fauna. Before 

 we began our work at Harpswell 517 species 

 of invertebrates had been reported from Casco 

 Bay, this list being largely the result of a 

 single summer's work in the region by the 

 U. S. Fish Conunission. In a single haul of 

 the dredge a few miles from our laboratory 

 118 species were obtained. In the region 

 around Woods Hole, Verrill's report on the 

 invertebrata records 660 species from an area 

 about the size of Casco Bay. Of course, sub- 

 sequent collections and investigations have 

 largely increased both these lists, but these 

 figures, based upon about the same amount 

 of work, show that this northern region is 

 not far inferior to the other in the number 

 of species. 



Another comparison has even more interest. 

 Of the 517 species from Casco Bay 273 are 

 not included in Verrill's list of the inverte- 

 brata of Vineyard Sound. In other words, 

 over 52 per cent, of the species occurring in 

 Casco Bay were not then known south of 

 Cape Cod. Of course, since these lists were 

 made up the range of many species has been 

 extended, and forms once known only north 

 of Cape Cod have been found south of that 

 promontory, and hence the percentage men- 

 tioned must be altered. Yet it is probable 

 that at least a quarter, if not even a third, 

 of the forms found in Casco Bay are either 

 entirely wanting from or very rare in the 

 waters around Woods Hole. 



It is a well-known fact in the distribution 

 of marine life that while the number of spe- 

 cies is smaller in cplder than in warmer 

 waters, the number of individuals of a spe- 



