AMERICAN NATURALIST 
Vou. XXVI. October, 1892. 310 
THE PROBLEM OF MARINE BIOLOGY. 
By Grorce W. FIELD. 
~ In common with the other branches of biological science, the 
study of marine life has made wonderful advances in the past 
half century, and we now begin to get a proper conception of 
the vastness and importance of this realm of nature. 
The study of marine life has been compassed by serious 
difficulties; on shipboard it is impossible to examine in the 
living condition the enormous quantity and endless variety of 
forms brought up at a single haul of the net or dredge; and 
the old method of merely dropping the specimens into vials 
of alcohol resulted in vials of wrath to the naturalist who later 
studied the creatures in hopes of gaining from the distorted 
relics some knowledge of the normal appearance and anat- 
omy. Now all this is changed, and by aid of certain chemical 
reagents most animals can be killed and preserved in a man- 
ner very satisfactory for study of their gross and microscopical 
anatomy, and hence the material collected can be examined 
at leisure in permanent laboratories with results corresponding 
io the better facilities. There has, too, been a great lack 
of suitable and accurate collecting apparatus. The early 
method was to scoop up a quantity of sea water and then 
tediously examine it in small quantities under the microscope. 
In 1845 Johannes Miiller, the great pioneer of marine biology, 
conceived the idea of condensing into a small volume of water 
57 
