MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION AT PORT ERIN. 111 
but in a manner so different from their ordinary school 
life that it would be a rest and a mental refreshment. 
The importance of studying living Nature, and the uses 
that ought to be made of Biological Stations in education, 
are rapidly coming to be recognised in many other parts 
of the world. Here these institutions are not yet recog- 
nised as university laboratories, and time spent in them 
does not count in the curriculum for degrees. But in far 
Japan, Professor Mitsukuri tells me all the Biological 
Students of Tokio University are required to spend at 
least one season at the Marine Station of Misaki, which is 
a recognised institution of the University, while those who 
propose to graduate in Biology must spend a considerably 
longer period in such work. Many of the American Uni- 
versities have Biological Stations as a necessary part of 
their equipment; and, in some cases, professors, staff, and 
students regularly migrate for the summer term to the 
sea-side laboratory. 
Although England led the way in the past in Marine 
Biology, we are now behind other countries in the facilities 
and arrangements which cannot be provided by private 
enterprise. But all these things will come in time. We 
shall have University Biological Stations and Municipal 
Biological Stations some day. The pity 1s that we cannot 
have them now instead of 10, 20, or 30 years hence. 
Sir Michael Foster, in a recent address, has said :—‘‘ It is 
a matter of regret that the enthusiasm of the young learner 
should be spent wholly on the museum and the laboratory, 
that he should be pushed by compulsion and drawn by 
rewards into morphological and physiological studies of 
the more formal and mechanical kind, while no encourage- 
ment is given to him to look Nature face to face in the 
field, and to catch direct from her lips the Catholic teaching 
which she alone can give.” 
