17 
intelligent, rational administration of our fishery interests. A 
knowledge of life in its relation to environment is an important 
subject which biological investigators have not heretofore suf- 
ficiently dealt with, but which, it seems to me, is necessary in 
order to give practical value to special studies of the different 
species. After all, it is the relations and interdependence of 
life in the aggregate, and of the conditions influencing it ad- 
versely or otherwise, that mainly concern those who are seek- 
ing to apply scientific methods of investigation to economic 
problems. 
‘‘T need not tell you that you may count on the Commission 
for any coéperation and aid that we may be able to give you in 
this direction, which, looked at from a purely economic stand- 
point, I consider of the utmost importance.” 
The Station will also serve as a center of interest and activ- 
ity for University students engaged on zoélogical and botanical 
subjects, and will in this way supply a most serious deficiency 
in our equipment, the disadvantages of which I have long de- 
plored. Not many years ago biological instruction in American 
colleges was mostly derived from books; of late it has been 
largely obtained in laboratories instead; but several years’ ex- 
perience of the output of the zodlogical college laboratory has 
convinced me that the mere book-worm is hardly narrower and 
more mechanical than the mere laboratory grub. Both have suf- 
fered, and almost equally, from a lack of opportunity to study 
nature alive. One knows about as much as the other of the 
real aspect of living nature, and of the ways in which living 
things limit and determine each others’ activities and characters, 
or in which all are determined by the inorganic environment. I 
have been particularly struck with the insufficient preparation 
of the ordinary graduate from laboratory courses in zoology for 
the work of a special instructor in the public schools. He can- 
not be an intelligent guide and teacher in the field, and he com- 
monly has no command of apparatus and methods of experiment 
calculated to make his pupils acquainted with the system of the 
living world. 
The immediate and pressing problem of the biological in- 
structor is to provide an equipment and to work out methods by 
_means of which his students may be brought into helpful contact 
with this world of life while it still lives, and by which they may 
