15 



carried on, and interesting improvements in special apparatus liave re- 

 sulted from the effort to overcome our peculiar difficulties. A paper on our 

 plankton methods and apparatus is now in course of preparation by the 

 Superintendent of the Station, Dr. ('. A. Kofoid, to whom this department of 

 the work has been assigned. ^ , 



As our work progresses and special problems are taken up for separate 

 and continuous investigation, the experimental method will necessarily come 

 prominently into use. The object of biological experimentation is the inter- 

 pretation of nature, and, like all intelligent experimental work, it must be 

 suggested and giiided by observation and hypothesis. With us it is the 

 tecological field in which experiment is especially called for. Given certain 

 phenomena of local distribution, of relative abundance, of association, of 

 habit, of variation, and the like, whose causes it is desirable to ascertain, it 

 is incumbent upon us, by a critical and exhaustive study of the environ- 

 ment to find the materials for rational hypotheses as to such causes, 

 and to test such hypotheses by experimental procedure. It is thus always 

 the field observation, or the laboratory observation made under condi- 

 tions which involve the least practicable departure fi'om natural conditions 

 actually existing, which must precede and suggest the experiment. The 

 method and the general object of this work resemble thus more closely, on 

 the whole, those of the agricultural experiment station — which is, indeed, a 

 biological station iinder another name and devoted to a special end — 

 than those of the laboratory of experimental physiology; and it is because 

 ours is to be in the end and in its final objects a station for the solution, by 

 experimental methods, of both special and general problems in the field of 

 cecology that it was christened by its official board of control the Biological 

 Experiment Station of the University. 



EQUIPMENT. 



The main features of our present equipment are the laboratorj^ boat and 

 its contents, the steam launch, a number of skiffs, and the apparatus and 

 belongings of the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History and of the 

 biological departments of the University of Illinois, both of which are placed, 

 without restriction, at the service of the Station force. 



THE FLOATING LABORATORY. 



Our ultimate objects do not limit us to any single field, but will eventually 

 compel us to transfer at least a part of our ()perations to other points for pur- 

 poses of comparison and contrast. Indeed, the Illinois River work is but a 

 convenient point of departui'e for an investigation of the whole Mississippi 

 River system.. These facts have made necessai-y for us a movable construc- 

 tion of considerable size, carefully designed and thoroughly equipped for our 

 work. Furthermore, the great changes of water level and the enormous ex- 

 pansion of the area covered at flood in the region over which we operate, 

 would nuike a location on shore oftentimes extremely inconvenient as working- 

 quaiiers for our Station force. There i.s a great advantage also in a position 



