406 "THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
These courses will be supplementary to regular university work, 
and will, to some extent, be especially adapted to the needs of 
teachers of biology in the secondary schools. Tables at the 
station will also be reserved for the use of visiting investigators 
and students of special subjects. 
For the successful accomplishment of the fresh-water work 
certain desiderata are evident: more precise and reliable methods 
for the quantitative and statistical study, not only of the 
plankton, but also of shore and bottom forms; more biographical 
work, studies of life histories in the broadest sense of the term, 
including precise observations upon the environment and its 
relation to the life cycle; more models of experimental work 
that shall make clear the feasibility of the application of the 
methods of the physiological laboratory to the study of 
_ the factors of environment; more biological stations, so that 
the conclusions arrived at in one locality may be extended and 
corrected in a score of others; and, finally, some biological 
Froebel, who shall demonstrate the disciplinary and cultural 
value of cecology as a field of biological instruction and establish 
a standard for others to imitate. 
The future of the fresh-water biological stations is bright with 
the hope of accomplishment, but their problems lie not wholly 
along the beaten paths of the past. In their work we may look 
for the happy combination of the sympathetic observation of 
the old-time naturalist, the technical skill and searching logic 
of the morphologist, and the patient zeal and ingenuity of the 
experimental physiologist, a combination, let us hope, that shall 
unlock not a few of the secrets of the world of life. 
