11 
any of tlie great groups of the system can he wholly a matter of 
indifference to the scientific student of fisli-culture, the interests 
of every species being more or less intimately bound up with the 
interests of every other, yet at least provisional conclusions 
of considerable practical value may he reached, with regard to 
this, that, or the other kind of fish or with regard to fishes at 
large, long before the entire system of interactions and relation¬ 
ships is fully understood. It is not necessary that we should 
know the food of every species of fish in the locality before 
we can generalize profitably the food relations of any one, 
although inference from such provisional generalizations must 
always be held subject to modification as our knowledge of 
related matters grows. A similar remark may he made with 
respect to such purely scientific matters as the limits and causes 
of variation, a very useful knowledge of which may be acquired 
without a full and final theory of variation in general. 
In actual practice it has been found that our work may best 
he opened up by comprehensive studies of the classification such 
as will give us a critical knowledge of all the forms occurring in 
our field and access to the published literature of each, and by 
parallel or slightly subsequent studies of their habits, life 
histories, and local distribution and abundance. 
GENERAL METHODS. 
The principal methods of the biological station are those of 
field and laboratory observation and record, collection, preserva¬ 
tion, qualitative and quantitative determination, description, 
illustration, generalization, experiment, induction, and report. 
By close and persevering observation in the field, we learn 
much of the actions, habits, and haunts of animals, of the 
special conditions under which they live, and of many similar 
matters which cannot possibly he learned in any other way; 
and not a little of this knowledge is necessary to an intelligent 
treatment of both general and special problems in biology. 
The acute, persevering, sympathetic observer of living 
nature—the “old-fashioned naturalist,” in short—is best to be 
understood as a “synthetic type,” all of whose best qualities 
should be not only preserved hut intensified among his variously 
differentiated progeny. If I may generalize my own experience, 
I must say that it is extraordinarily difficult at the present time 
