WIIXIAM KEITH BROOKS — CONKUN 



of animal life in the ocean is incomparably greater than that upon the 

 land. In a word, the ocean is now, as it has been at all stages in the 

 earth's history, the home of life ; and it is there, and there only, that we 

 find the living representatives of the oldest fossils, and are thus enabled 

 to study the continuous history of life from its simplest to its most com- 

 plex manifestations. 



On the sand flats at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, we find, living 

 side by side, animals like Lingula, Amphioxus, Limulus and Balanoglos- 

 sus, which are the representatives of some of the oldest and most primi- 

 tive types of animal life ; and all attempts to trace out the natural rela- 

 tionships of any group of animals, lead us at once to forms which are 

 found only in the ocean. 



The animals which have contributed most extensively to the forma- 

 tion of the earth's crust, the corals and foraminifera and radiolarians, 

 abound in the ocean today, and it is only by studying their life, by obser- 

 vations at the seashore, that we can understand and interpret their 

 geological influence. 



Nearly every one of the great generalizations of morphology is based 

 upon the study of marine animals, and most of the problems which are 

 now awaiting a solution must be answered in the same way. 



For these reasons our chief aim in zoology and animal morphology 

 has been to provide means for research upon the marine animals of the 

 Atlantic coast, and for nine years, successive parties, composed of 

 instructors, fellows and students in this department, together with in- 

 structors and advanced students from other institutions have spent at 

 the seashore all the months in which marine work is practicable. Their 

 time and energy have been devoted to research rather than to the preser- 

 vation of collections, and the wisdom of this course can be estimated by 

 examination of the accompanying list of publications ; all of which are 

 based, either in part or entirely, upon researches which we have carried 

 on at the seashore. 



The wisdom of our policy is well illustrated by the fact that the lead- 

 ing naturalist of America, himself the head of one of the largest 

 scientific collections in the world, says in his annual report for 1884,* 

 that the expenses of an immense natural-history collection are so great 

 that it would be far cheaper, with the present facilities and the cost of 

 travel, to supply the student with the necessary funds for valuable 

 researches, than to go on for years spending in salaries of curators and 

 the care of collections, sums of money which, if spent in a different man- 

 ner, in promoting original investigation in the field or in the laboratory 

 and in providing means for the publication of such original researches, 

 would do far more towards the promotion of natural history than our 

 past methods of spending our resources. 



This fact has become widely recognized during the last ten years, as 

 is shown by the establishment of marine laboratories by several of the 



* Report of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge, Mass. 



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