MA BINE BIOLOGICAL STATION OF CANADA 



5 



SESSIONAL PAPER No. 22a 



This year (1901) Professor Ramsay Wright was chosen as Assistant Director in 

 order to further facilitate the operations of the Station. 



At the first meeting of the Board of Management, on February 10, 1898, in Ottawa, 

 plans and specifications were considered, and it was arranged that tenders should be 

 advertised for by the agent of the Department of Marine and Fisheries, at St. John, 

 New Brunswick, and the location was fixed at St. Andrews, New Brunswick, on the 

 shore adjacent to Indian Point, and near low-water mark. The successful tenderers 

 were Messrs. D. W. Clark & Son, St. John, New Brunswick, and the nature of the 

 building was to be such as to combine the advantages of a floating and movable, as well 

 ^s of a fixed or more permanent institution. 



A fixed location on land while advantageous for microscopical, physical, and minute 

 chemical investigations on account of the absence of vibration, has the disadvantage of 

 a,ffording direct and conv(;nient access to a portion of the coast only, viz., that portion 

 of the coast in the immediate vicinity of the building. A floating station, on the other 

 hand, has the advantage of ensuring the readiest opportunities of scientific investigation 

 during the same season, or during successive seasons, along different portions of the coast 

 and the waters adjacent thereto. As Mr. Richard Rathbun, a distinguished United States 

 biologist, says, wilh reference to the marine investigations of the United States Fish 

 Commission, ' many problems require to be investigated in particular localities, where 

 ' the conditions are especially favourable. For that reason, the study of the habits and 

 ' development of such forms as the oyster, the shad, the salmon, the Spanish mackerel, 

 ' and many other species, have been conducted elsewhere ' than at the permanent Woods 

 Hole Marine Station. Mr. Rathbun further points out, in regard to permanent, fixed 

 laboratories, that while they are indispensable to the study of fisheries' problems, they 

 cannot, unless supplemented by convenient means for reaching distant points, be of 

 more than local value and utility. It was the lack of such facilities, Mr. Rathbun goes 

 on to say, during the first ten years of the Commission with which he was ofl&cially con 

 nected, that made it necessary to move its summer station from place to place. 



The Canadian station was designed in the form of an ark or oblong building placed 

 upon a large scow, so that it could be moved from one point to another along the coast, as 

 the Board of Management might determine. At each chosen location it might be either 

 moored or hauled up on dry land above high water mark, thus fulfilling the conditions of 

 a floating as well as of a fixed scientific station. The building, during the first two years, 

 was not placed upon the scow ; but was erected on the shore at St. Andrews, New 

 Brunswick, with the intention of having it placed upon the special scow whenever the 

 Board of Management decided to move it away to a new locality. The laboratory was 

 completed in June, 1899, and is a neat one-story structure of wood, well lighted from 

 the roof and sides, and somewhat resembling a Pullman car, with a row of eight large 

 windows along each side, and a door with sash provided with plate glass at either end. 

 Its total length is 50 feet, the principal room, or main laboratory, occupying the central 

 part of the structure and forming a well-lighted and cheerful work-room, measuring 30 

 feet in length, and 15 feet in breadth. Two tank- and store-rooms are at the anterior 

 end, each room 6 feet by 6 feet, while at the opposite end are four rooms, one reserved 

 for the director, another adjacent to the director's^ devoted to the use of the attendant, 

 and provided with a sink and spacious shelving, and certain kitchen appliances, while 

 on the opposite side of the passage, are two rooms, one used as a tank room and the 

 other as a chemical room, the last being provided with a table for chemical balances and 

 other instruments, and with shelves for storing chemicals and re-agents. Of the 

 eight windows on each side, half of them light up the main work-room. On the roof, 

 which is slightly elevated in the centre, is a neat ventilator raised or skylight with 

 nine movable panes on either side to admit light and fresh air. The scow on which the 

 laboratory was placed in the spring of 1901, is 60 feet in length and 19 J feet in breadth, 

 and about 9 feet from deck to the outside of the bottom planking, that is, in vertical 

 depth. It provides a narrow platform around the sides of the building, and a spacious 

 platform at each end 6^ feet in width. A small double-acting brass deck pump placed 

 on the platform at the front entrance is connected by hose-pipe with the fresh-water 



