13 
solution of the larger problems involved. While it is true, for example, that 
nothing in or about the waters studied which in any notable way affects any 
of the great groups of the system can be wholly a matter of indiffer- 
ence to the scientific student of fish-culture, the interests of everv speciés 
being more or less intimately bound up with the interests of every other, yet 
provisional conclusions, at least, with regard to this, that, or the other kind 
of fish, or with regard to fishes at large, may be reached which will have con- 
siderable practical value, long before the entire system of interactions and 
relationships 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 pro- 
visional generalizations must always be held subject to modification as our 
knowledge of related matters grows.» A similar remark may be made with 
respect to such purely seientific 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 be 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, preservation, qualitative and 
quantitative determination, description, illustration, generalization, experi- 
ment, 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 be learned in 
any other way; and not a little of this knowledge is necessary to an intelli- 
gent 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 but intensi- 
fied among his variously differentiated progeny. If I may generalize my 
own experience, I must say that it is extraordinarily difficult at the present 
time to find for this work the trained and intelligent naturalist, habituated to 
the methods of the close observer, whose eye nothing escapes, but whose 
mind rapidly and skilfully sifts the miscellaneous offerings of his senses, 
holding the significant and suggestive, and letting slip the trivial and the 
unessential. There seem to be among our younger college men ten practical 
embryologists to one good observer. It is, in fact, the biological station, 
wisely and liberally managed, which is to restore to us what was best in the 
naturalist of the old school united to what is best in the laboratory student 
of the new. 
