IHE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST 
Vou XXXII. June, 1898. No. 378. 
THE FRESH-WATER BIOLOGICAL STATIONS 
OF AMERICA. 
CHARLES A. KOFOID. 
Tue fundamental purpose of all biological stations, both 
marine and fresh-water, is essentially the same. They serve to 
bring the student and the investigator into closer connection 
with nature, with living things in their native environment. 
They facilitate observation and multiply opportunities for 
inspiring contact with, and study of, the living world. They 
encourage in this day of microtome morphology the existence 
and development of the old natural history or, in modern terms, 
cecology, in the scheme of biological education. 
The predominance of the marine station is but natural, for 
American biology was cradled at Nahant and Penikese. Until 
recently, practically all the great centers of biological investiga- 
tion and instruction have been located almost within sound of 
the sea. It was also to be expected that the seaside laboratory 
would attract the inland biologist who is searching for a place 
in which the summer can be passed with both pleasure and 
profit, and that the abundance and novelty of the marine fauna 
would overshadow if not entirely eliminate all attention to the 
fresh-water fauna of the vicinity, attractive though it might be. 
