964 The American Naturalist. í [November, 
Berlin Academy of Sciences the desired grant would be forth- 
coming. 
So Dr. Dohrn. immediately interested the sympathies of 
three of the most prominent members of the Academy, Helm- 
holz, DuBois Reymond and Virchow. They promised their 
aid and assured him that the desired endorsement would be 
forthcoming, and, rejoiced by the good prospects, back he went 
to Naples, only to find new troubles which he had never sus- 
pected. 
-In the agreement with the municipality it was stipulated 
that the station building should not exceed a certain heighth, 
but the architect whose discharge has already been mentioned, 
had gone to the officials and had shown them that the walls 
were nearly a metre higher than was permitted, a fact which 
was really the result of this architect’s own act. He was tak- 
ing his revenge. 
There, was trouble immediately. The papers were filled 
with denunciations of the young German who had thus dared 
to violate the stipulations of the city, and many there were in 
the council who demanded that the whole building should 
come down. Certainly the prospect looked blue enough, but 
there was more to follow. On that very Christmas eve word 
was received from Berlin that the Academy had refused to en- 
dorse his petition, and that the ministry consequently refused 
to grant the necessary money. The grounds for non-endorse- 
ment were that the aquarium gave the enterprise a mercenary 
rather than 4 scientific aspect, and, again, that Dr. Dohrn had 
as yet done no scientific work that gave him the standing nec- 
essary for the head of such an establishment. Dohrn imme- 
diately wrote his friends, but was in Berlin before his letters. 
He personally called upon every member of the Academy, and 
such were his representations that he received the desired en- 
dorsement at the next meeting of the Academy, and the grant 
of funds immediately followed. 
There still remained the matter of the quarrel with the city 
of Naples. In this Dr. Dohrn thought that possibly diplomacy 
could be made to play a part, and so the German Crown 
Prince was interested in the matter and shortly the Govern- 
