1895.] The Cold Spring Harbor Biological Laboratory. 231 
laboratory party. During the coming Spring a dormitory 
building for lodging the students is to be erected, which will 
add greatly to the conveniences of the students. The equip- 
ment of the laboratory in the way of microscopes, small appa- 
ratus, chemicals, etc., is excellent, and embraces everything 
needed to make profitable a summer at the sea shore. 
While the object of marine laboratories on our coast has been 
varied, at the outset most of them were started almost solely 
for the purpose of encouraging research. In several cases they 
consisted at first in the collection of a small number of 
advanced students from special universities who came to the 
sea shore for the purpose of carrying on work that they could 
not carry on at home. These little nuclei, in some cases, have 
grown into large schools and in other cases have remained 
small collections of investigators. These early students have 
everywhere taken their places in our institutions of learning 
and, appreciating their own debt to sea shore work, they are 
ever encouraging others in the same line of study. As the 
small laboratory has grown into the school its object has some- 
what changed, but in most of the marine schools, that are at 
present in existence on our coasts, the primal object is that of 
original research and investigation. In recent years more 
attention has been given to courses of instruction, but all of 
the schools, except that at Cold Spring Harbor, aim primarily 
at encouraging investigation. 
The biological laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor was organ- 
ized, however, with a somewhat different purpose. The 
Brooklyn Institute itself is a school of public instruction, and 
the biological school which it organized naturally assumed 
from the very outset more of the character of a school of in- 
struction than one of research. From the first the aim of the 
Cold Spring Harbor school has been to furnish a place where 
instruction in biology of the highest character could be given. 
For this purpose regular courses of lectures accompanied by 
courses of laboratory work have been given each year, and, 
while inviting and encouraging research, its first aim has been 
instruction. The ordinary student needs guidance the first 
one or two years at the sea shore. To give him laboratory 
