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BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
guarantee the collection and preservation of scientific data that would be of incal- 
culable value to the fisherman as well as to the dealer. 
It is a fact that at present there is not a single institution along our entire coast 
where one can observe the habits of our marine animals uninterruptedly throughout 
the year. There is no place where our biologists may go for a few weeks during the 
winter or early spring, when the ocean is teeming with animal life. The summer 
months are as the autumn to marine forms, and he who would study ocean life at its 
best must work in the early spring. The organization or individual that accomplishes 
the establishment of a permanent institution where instruction in practical fish-culture 
and fishery economics can be given ; where apparatus is provided for the investigation 
of the lakes, rivers, and sea; where naturalists from our universities and commission- 
ers from our States will be welcome at all times of the year, and where problems of 
scientific and economic interest can be studied and solved, will obtain what Baird, 
Goode, and Ryder saw in the distant future, and will combine and control the purely 
practical and the purely scientific. The need of American biology to-day is the same 
as the need of successful fish-culture — coordination, cooperation, and the establish- 
ment of a station, or the devotion of a station already established, like that at Woods 
Hole, to instruction and to extended uninterrupted scientific research. 
Providence, Rhode Island. 
