1893.] Notes on Marine Laboratories of Europe. 699 
friendly and he feels that even the attendants are willing, 
often anxious to give him help. 
At present the station at Naples consists of two buildings ; 
the first shown in the foreground in the accompanying figure 
(Fig. 1), is the older, the main building, behind it is the newly 
built physiological laboratory. In the basement of the 
main building is the aquarium, well managed, open to the 
public, and eagerly visited. Passing into the aquarium 
room from the main entrance, one descends into a long, dark, 
concreted room, lighted only through wall-tanks brilliant on 
every side with the varied forms of life. There are in all 
about two dozen large aquaria embedded in the walls of the 
sides and of the main partition of the room. The water is 
clear and blue. The background in each aquaria, built of 
rock work, catches the light from above and throws in clear 
relief the living inmates. The first tank will perhaps be full 
of star fish and sea urchins, bright in color, often clustered on 
the glass each with a dim halo of pale, threadlike feet. In 
the background may be a living clump of crinoids, flowering 
out like a garden of bright colored lilies. Ina neighboring 
tank, rich with dark colored seaweeds, will be a group of fly- - 
ing gurnards, reddish and brilliantly spotted, feeling cautiously 
along the bottom with the finger-like rays of their wing- 
shaped fins. Here too may be squids, delicate and fish-like, 
swimming timidly up and down; perhaps a series of huge 
triton snails below amid clustered eggs of cuttle fish. In 
another tank would be a bank of sea anemones with all the 
large and brilliant forms common to southern waters. Here 
may be corals in the background and a forest of sea fans in 
orange, red and yellow, with a precious fringe of pink coral, 
flowering out in yellow starlike polyps. There may again be 
a host of ascidians, delicate, transparent, solitary forms, the 
lanky Ciona, the brilliantly crimson Cynthia and huge 
masses of varied, compound forms. Swimming in the water 
may be chains of Salpa and occasionally a number of Amphi- 
oxus, the latter, as they from time to time emerge from the 
sandy bottom, flurry about as if with sudden fright, quickly to 
disappear. Variety is one of the striking characters of 
neighboring tanks. In one, brilliant forms will outvie the 
