MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION AT PORT ERIN. 37 



applications to many departments of human knowledge 

 and interest. A suggestion made 50 years ago by a 

 scientific man in Ceylon, and lately revived by several 

 different men, has led, if we can trust a brief announce- 

 ment which has just reached this country, to the successful 

 production by a French professor on the southern coasts 

 of the Mediterranean of a greatly increased crop of pearls 

 in the local pearl oyster. The suggestion made by Dr. 

 Kelaart in 1857 was that by infecting oysters with the 

 minute pearl-producing parasite the harvest from the 

 pearl-banks might be increased. Professor Eap'hael 

 Dubois has, we hear, transplanted the oysters from a 

 locality where they produced few pearls to one where he 

 had ascertained the parasites were abundant, with, it is 

 said, highly successful results. The Copepoda — minute, 

 inconspicuous and formerly despised — are now known to 

 be of importance to man in at least two respects — as the 

 food of many fishes and as purifying agents in the sea. 

 Their economic value when present in swarms such as 

 that found at Port Erin on July 4th must be evident to 

 all ;' and I have already told you how Sir Oliver Lodge has 

 proposed their utilisation in dealing with the sewage of 

 large towns. Colonel Bruce, who was at our October 

 meeting and who has agreed to address us in February on 

 his recent experiences in Uganda when investigating 

 sleeping sickness, finds that his work on Trypanosomes in 

 connection with that disease is leading him to various 

 lower animals and he now wants information from us as to 

 the parasites in the blood of fishes. 



But I need not multiply instances. The web of life 

 is such that everything seems to have some bearing upon 

 everything else. There is still much to be found out about 

 everything, and the commonest and best-known animals 

 present some of the most interesting problems. He who 



