MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION AT PORT ERIN. 43 



EVALUATION OF THE SEA. 



This Biological Station was started by a body of men 

 who were engaged in faunistic work — that is, in collecting 

 and identifying various groups of marine animals, and such 

 work is always necessary in exploring a new district, and 

 moreover, it is never finished but must always go on to some 

 extent, even when accompanied by more difficult experimental 

 research. Every year we keep adding something to the 

 published records of our fauna and flora. With the long 

 list of additions made in our last Annual Report (the accumula- 

 tions of some years) we brought the total number of species 

 for our Liverpool district up to about 2,500. But it is quite 

 possible that some common but minute species have been 

 overlooked ; in the present report several new kinds of Dino- 

 nagellates have been recorded, and last summer we added a 

 large species of Lucernaria, which had not been previously 

 noticed in the Irish Sea. 



But in addition to such faunistic and ecological work, 

 the study of the conditions under which the animals live, 

 we have advanced in our research work at the Biological 

 Station into comparative anatomy and morphology, into 

 embryology and life-histories, and into physiology and bio- 

 chemistry. And now, in my final words, I wish to direct 

 attention to an extension of faunistic work which will, I believe, 

 become an important investigation at marine biological stations, 

 and is eminently suitable for team-work where a number of 

 zoologists and botanists are gathered together in co-operation. 

 It is the collection of material for a rough census or approxima- 

 tion to the numbers of different kinds of common animals and 

 plants found in a particular area, and their rate of growth 

 and reproduction, the study of the environment of each kind, 

 and the attempt to determine the conditions which limit their 

 distribution or affect their abundance. This is really no new 



