404 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST.  [VOL. XXXII. 
type,” all of whose best qualities should be not only preserved but intensified 
among his variously differentiated progeny. It is the biological station, 
wisely and liberally managed, which is to restore to us what was best in the 
naturalist of the old school united to what is best in the laboratory student 
of the new. 
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 guided by observation and hypothesis. With us it is the 
cecological 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 environment 
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 conditions which 
involve the least practicable departure from natural conditions actually 
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 under 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. 
As the work of the station is still in its earlier stages, the 
papers thus far published give the results of the preliminary 
explorations, and, consequently, are of a systematic, faunistic, or 
biographical character in the main. A report upon the aquatic 
Hymenoptera and a considerable portion of the Diptera and 
Lepidoptera, by Mr. C. A. Hart, has already been published, 
and additional papers upon the Odonata and Ephemeridz are 
in preparation. It is the purpose of these papers to elucidate 
the life histories of the insects of these groups by giving a 
detailed account of the identified eggs, larve, and pup, 
together with a discussion of their seasonal and local distribu- 
tion, their habitat, food, etc. As a result of the breeding work 
carried on at the station, immature stages, hitherto undescribed, 
of two hundred and twenty-five species have been obtained. 
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