Notes and Comment 



141 



NOTES AND COMMENT. 

 Since the last issue of the Plant World so many notices 

 of laboratories for summer work in the biological sciences have 

 been received that it seems desirable to call attention to a few 

 of those which from their recent establishment, or for other 

 reasons, are less widely known than some that have already been 

 noticed. 



It is announced that the Marine Laboratory of Johns 

 Hopkins University will be reopened in Jamaica in 1910. The 

 great diversity of climatic conditions in close proximity, the 

 richness of the fauna and flora, the location and topography of 

 the island, and its advantages as regards residence combine 

 to make Jamaica well-nigh ideal for the establishment of a lab- 

 oratory for the study of marine forms, factors of local distribu- 

 tion, and the numerous problems connected with the fauna and 

 flora of a mountain region in the midst of tropical seas. 



The University of Michigan announces the opening of a 

 biological station for instruction and research in the lake region 

 a few miles south of the Straits of Mackinaw, and near the much 

 frequented "Inland Route" from Petosky on Lake Michigan 

 to Cheboygan on Lake Huron. The variety of faunal and floral 

 conditions is hardly as great as in some other locations that 

 might have been selected, but sudents will have the exceptional 

 advantage of personal instruction in "the exact methods of the 

 laboratory, not hitherto commonly used in the held :;: * * 

 applied to the observation of habits and to the making of field rec- 

 ords, both written and pictorial." To specify in part — "a 

 physical examination of Douglas Lake with reference to its 

 contour, depth, inflow and outflow, character of bottom, re- 

 lation to hydrographic basin, the turbidity, temperature and 

 chemical constitution of its water will be followed by an examina- 

 tion of its plants and animals. After a study of the distribution 

 of the plants of the lake, the distribution of protozoa, sponges, 

 hydras, crustaceans, an-d other invertebrates in the lake with 

 reference to depth, temperature, and other physical conditions, 

 their relation to the plants and their association with one another 

 to form faunae will be considered." 



