THE ZOOLOGICAL STATION AT NAPLES 223 
be searched with dredge and trawl and fished with long lines, each 
bearing many baited hooks, and the pelagic animals caught from the 
side of the vessel. Small boats would be sent out to gather from the 
rocks and grottoes under the water-line such organisms as the sponges, 
corals, worms, echinoderms, mollusks and algae. A portion of the 
catch would be examined by the naturalists on board, another part kept 
in well aerated aquaria to be taken in the early morning by the 
Johannes Miiller to the Naples Station. In the night-time silk tow- 
nets would collect from the vast numbers of minute living things that 
then reappear after having gone below the surface waters to escape the 
intense sunlight. Stone-plates could be lowered to the sea-bottom in 
various places to be taken up and examined at regular intervals in 
order to study the assembling and growth of the sessile organisms that 
seek such locations. Then these stone-plates might be changed from 
one place to another, varying the depth, light and other conditions of 
existence in accord with the method of experimental zoology, with re- 
sults of the greatest value to the knowledge of the distribution and 
evolution of marine organisms and scarcely possible except by means 
of such a floating laboratory. After exploring the sea around Naples 
the floating laboratory might be taken to the coasts of Sardinia, Tunis, 
Crete, Cyprus and other regions. The moment anchor is cast the vessel 
serves as dwelling house and laboratory from which would center all 
the activities of a marine station. If needed, a portable house, carried 
on board, could be quickly placed upon any desired shore. In connec- 
tion with biology other kinds of scientific work such as geology, paleon- 
tology and philology might be advanced, with the best possible conserva- 
tion of all the collections on board the ship, whereas it is often so diffi- 
cult and dangerous to transport such things from isolated regions by the 
ordinarily available means. It is easily seen that such a combination 
would greatly advance the various sciences concerned at the least cost to 
each. This plan, always in Dohrn’s mind, was temporarily laid in the 
background by the more pressing need of the erection of the building 
for comparative physiology which absorbed much time in the last years 
of Dohrn’s life. Through the death of F. A. Krupp his promise to 
build a 700-ton yacht for this deep sea investigation came to naught. 
Now, although the Prince of Monaco is devoting much time and money 
to the development of oceanography, and various governments are send- 
ing out vessels, yet the field is so large and so important that it is to be 
hoped Dohrn’s plan will be carried out not alone at Naples, but in 
America and other countries. 
In spite of the time consumed in directing the affairs of the zoolog- 
ical station and in traveling and making addresses in its behalf, Dohrn 
was always an investigator of the foremost rank. During the half- 
century of continuous production his bibliography numbers eighty 
titles. Following in the footsteps of his father, the entomologist Karl 
