CORRESPONDENCE. 
A Biological Station in Greenland. 
Editor of the American Naturalist. | 
Sir: — The great liberality shown in the United States in distribut- 
ing money for educational purposes, both from the State and from 
wealthy people is, as is well known, not shared in other countries. 
It, therefore, still more becomes our duty to take interest in any 
cause which will further the study of biology in any part of the world 
where the biologist has to deal with financial difficulties. 
Dr. Morten P. Porsild, a Danish botanist, has asked his govern- 
ment to erect a biological station in Greenland, and as science, in 
the truest sense of the word, is international it is of just as great 
interest to us in America, as it is to the Danish biologists that such a 
station should be erected. In order to show our interest in the 
proposed station I thought it worth while to consider, in a few words, 
the importance of such a station from a scientific point of view. 
The importance of biological stations has been more and more 
emphasized as our views of biological problems have widened. We 
have just passed over a crisis in which the entire time of the zoólo- 
gist was spent in the laboratory, in microscopical study, and have 
passed into a wider field, have enlarged the meaning of the word 
biology. It does not mean the study of structure merely, but func- 
tion, not merely morphology but physiology, and all the factors 
which influence it; not individuals only but groups and relations 
between groups; it means the science of life in all its branches and 
their mutual dependence. on each other. The recent investigations 
. of Professor J. Loeb have emphasized this fact. The whole field of 
experimental zoólogy emphasizes the importance of studying animal 
life and of studying it scientifically. Many of our greatest biological 
problems are to be solved by studying outdoor zoólogy. A great 
work is yet to be written on how and to what extent selection works 
in Nature. The question of variation is left to the student of the 
complex phenomenon of environment under which these animals live 
and develop and how these conditions effect a given species ; it is not 
a question for the mere systematist but the student of animal life, of 
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