A History of Science Volume V Part 5

They are ribbon-like in tenuousness, and to casual glance they give the impression of long, narrow pennants softly waving in a gentle breeze.

The great conger--five or six feet in length--has, indeed, a certain propensity to extend himself rigidly in a fishlike line and lie immovable, but the other species is always true to his colors, so to say--his form is always outlined in curves.

The eels attract their full share of attention from the visitors, but there is one family of creatures which easily holds the palm over all the others in this regard. These are the various representatives of the great cult of squids and cuttle-fishes. The cuttle-fish proper--who, of course, is no fish at all--is shaped strangely like a diminutive elephant, with a filmy, waving membrane along its sides in lieu of legs.

Like the other members of his clan, he can change his color variously.

Sometimes he is of a dull brown, again prettily mottled; then, with almost kaleidoscopic suddenness, he will a.s.sume a garb beautifully striped in black and white, rivalled by nothing but the coat of the zebra. The cuttle-fish is a sluggish creature, seeking out the darker corners of his grotto, and often lying motionless for long periods together. But not so the little squid. He does not thrive in captivity, and incessantly wings his way back and forth, with slow, wavy flappings of his filmy appendages, until he wears himself out and dies unreconciled.

In marked contrast with both cuttle-fish and squid is their cousin the octopus--a creepy, crawly creature, like eight serpents in one--at once the oddest and the most fascinating creature in the entire aquarium. You will find a crowd almost always before his grotto watching his curious antics. Usually slow and deliberate in movement, he yet has capacity for a certain agility. Now and again he dives off suddenly, head first, through the water, with the directness if not quite with the speed of an arrow. A moment later, tired of his flight, he sprawls his eight webbed legs out in every direction, breaking them seemingly into a thousand joints, and settles back like an animated parachute awreck. Then perchance he perches on a rock knowingly, with the appearance of owl-like wisdom, albeit his head looks surprisingly like a frog's. Anon he holds his head erect and stretches out his long arms in what is most palpably a yawn. Then, for pure diversion, he may hold himself half erect on his umbrella frame of legs and sidle along a sort of quadrille--a veritable "eight hands in round."

But all the while he conveys distinctly the impression of a creature to the last degree blase. Even when a crab is let down into his grotto by an attendant for the edification of the visitors the octopus seems to regard it with only lukewarm interest. If he deigns to go in pursuit, it is with the air of one who says, "Anything to oblige," rather than of eagerness for a morsel of food. Yet withal, even though unhurried, he usually falls upon the victim with surprising sureness of aim, encompa.s.sing it in his multiform net. Or perhaps, thinking the game hardly worth so much effort, he merely reaches out suddenly with one of his eight arms--each of which is a long-drawn-out hand as well--and grasps the victim and conveys it to his distensible maw without so much as changing his att.i.tude.

All this of the giant octopus--brown and warty and wrinkled and blase.

But the diminutive cousin in the grotto with the jellyfishes is a bird of quite another feather. Physically he is constructed on the same model as the other, but his mentality is utterly opposed. No grand roles for him; his part is comedy. He finds life full of interest. He is satisfied with himself and with the world. He a.s.sumes an aspect of positive rakishness, and intelligence, so to say, beams from his every limb. All day long he must be up and doing. For want of better business he will pursue a shrimp for hours at a time with the zest of a true sportsman.

Now he darts after his intended prey like a fox-hound. Again he resorts to finesse, and sidles off, with eyes fixed in another direction, like a master of stratagem. To be sure, he never catches the shrimp--but what of that? The true sportsman is far removed from the necessity for mere material profit. I half suspect that little octopus would release the shrimp if once he caught him, as the true fisherman throws back the excess of his catch. It is sport, not game, that he covets.

THE LABORATORY AND ITS FOUNDER

When one has made the circuit of the aquarium he will have seen and marvelled at some hundreds of curious creatures utterly unlike anything to be found above water. Brightly colored starfishes, beautiful sea-urchins, strange stationary ascidians, and flower-like sea-anemones, quaint sea-horses, and filmy, fragile jellyfishes and their multiform kin--all seem novel and wonderful as one sees them in their native element. Things that appear to be parts of the rocky or sandy bed of the grottos startle one by moving about, and thus discovering themselves as living creatures, simulating their environment for purposes of protection. Or perhaps what seems to be a giant snail suddenly unfurls wings from its seeming sh.e.l.l, and goes waving through the water, to the utter bewilderment of the beholder. Such freaks as this are quite the rule among the strange tribes of the deep, for the crowding of population there makes the struggle for existence keen, and necessitates all manner of subterfuges for the preservation of species.

Each and every one of the thirty-odd grottos will repay long observation, even on the part of the most casual visitor, and when one has seen them all, he will know more at first hand of the method of life of the creatures of the sea than all the books could teach him. He will depart fully satisfied, and probably, if he be the usual sight-seer, he will never suspect that what he has seen is really but an incidental part of the inst.i.tution whose building he has entered. Even though he note casually the inscription "Stazione Zoologica" above the entrance, he may never suspect that the aquarium he has just visited is only an adjunct--the popular exhibit, so to speak--of the famous inst.i.tution of technical science known to the English-speaking world as the Marine Biological Laboratory at Naples. Yet such is the fact. The aquarium seems worthy enough to exist by and for itself. It is a great popular educator as well as amuser, yet its importance is utterly insignificant compared with the technical features of the inst.i.tution of which it is an adjunct.

This technical department, the biological laboratory proper, has its local habitation in the parts of the building not occupied by the aquarium--parts of which the general public, as a rule, sees nothing.

There is, indeed, little to see that would greatly interest the casual inspector, for in its outward aspects one laboratory is much like another, a seeming hodgepodge of water-tanks, gla.s.s jars of specimens, and tables for microscopes. The real status of a laboratory is not determined by the equipment.

And yet it will not do to press this a.s.sertion too far, for in one sense it is the equipment of the Naples laboratory that has made it what it is. Not, however, the equipment in the sense of microscopes and other working paraphernalia. These, of course, are the best of their kind, but machinery alone does not make a great inst.i.tution, any more than clothes make the man. The all-essential and distinctive equipment of the laboratory reveals itself in its personnel. In the present case, as always in a truly great inst.i.tution of any kind, there is one dominating personality, one moving spirit. This is Dr. Anton Dohrn, founder of the laboratory, and still its controller and director, in name and in fact.

More than twenty-five years ago Dr. Dohrn, then a young man fresh from the universities of his native Germany, discovered what he felt to be a real need in the biological world. He was struck with the fact that nowhere in the world could be found an establishment affording good opportunities for the study of marine life. Water covers three-fifths of the earth's surface, as everybody knows, and everywhere this water teems with life, so that a vast preponderance of the living things of the globe find their habitat there. Yet the student who might desire to make special studies of this life would find himself balked at the threshold for want of opportunity.

It was no great thing to discover this paucity, which, indeed, fairly beckoned the discoverer. The great thing was to supply the deficiency, and this was what Dr. Dohrn determined to do. He selected Naples as the best location for the laboratory he proposed to found, because of its climate and its location beside the teeming waters of the Mediterranean.

He organized a laboratory; he called about him a corps of able a.s.sistants; he made the Marine Biological Laboratory at Naples famous, the Mecca of all biological eyes throughout the world. It was not all done in a day. It was far enough from being done without opposition and discouragement; but these are matters of history which Dr. Dohrn now prefers not to dwell upon. Suffice it that the result aimed at was finally achieved, and in far greater measure than could at first be hoped for.

And from that day till this Naples has been the centre of that branch of biological inquiry which has for its object the investigation of problems best studied with material gathered from the sea. And this, let me hasten to add, includes far more than a mere study of the life histories of marine animals and plants as such. It includes problems of cell activity, problems of heredity, life problems of many kinds, having far wider horizons than the mere question as to how a certain fish or crustacean lives and moves and has its being.

Dr. Dohrn's chief technical a.s.sociates are all Germans, like their leader, but, like him also, all gifted with a polyglot mastery of tongues that has stood them in good stead in their intercourse with the biologists of many nationalities who came to work at the laboratory. I must not pause to dwell upon the personnel of the staff in general, but there is one other member who cannot be overlooked even in the most casual survey of the work of the inst.i.tution. One might almost as well forget Dr. Dohrn himself as to overlook Signor Lo Bianco, chief of the collecting department. Signor Bianco it is who, having expert knowledge of the haunts and habits of every manner of marine creature, can direct his fishermen where to find and how to secure whatever rare specimen any worker at the laboratory may desire. He it is, too, who, by studying old methods and inventing new ones, has learned how to preserve the delicate forms for subsequent study in lifelike ensemble that no one else can quite equal. Signor Bianco it is, in short, who is the indispensable right-hand man of the inst.i.tution in all that pertains to its practical working outside the range of the microscope. Each night Signor Lo Bianco directs his band of fishermen as to what particular specimens are most to be sought after next day to meet the needs of the workers in the laboratory. Before sunrise each day, weather permitting, the little scattered fleet of boats is far out on the Bay of Naples; for the surface collecting, which furnishes a large share of the best material, can be done only at dawn, as the greater part of the creatures thus secured sink into the retirement of the depths during the day, coming to the surface to feed only at night. You are not likely to see the collecting party start out, therefore, but if you choose you may see them return about nine or ten o'clock by going to the dock not far from the laboratory. The boats come in singly at about this hour, their occupants standing up to row, and pushing forward with the oars, after the awkward Neapolitan fashion. Many of the fishermen are quaint enough in appearance; some of them have grown old in the service of the laboratory. The morning's catch is contained in gla.s.s jars placed in baskets especially constructed for the purpose. The baskets have handles, but these are quite superfluous except to lift them from the boats, for in the transit to the laboratory the baskets are carried, as almost everything else is carried in Naples, on the head. To the novitiate it seems a striking risk to pile baskets of fragile gla.s.s and even more fragile specimens one above another, and attempt to balance the whole on the head, but nothing could be easier, or seemingly more secure, for these experts. Arrived at the laboratory, the jars are turned over to Signer Lo Bianco and his a.s.sistants, who sort the material, and send to each investigator in the workrooms whatever he may have asked for.

Of course surface-skimming is not the only method of securing material for the laboratory. The inst.i.tution owns a steam-launch named the _Johannes Muller_, in honor of the great physiologist, which operates a powerful dredge for securing all manner of specimens from the sea-bottom. Then ordinary lines and nets are more or less in requisition for capturing fish. And in addition to the regular corps of collectors, every fisherman of the neighborhood has long since learned to bring to the laboratory all rare specimens of any kind that he may chance to capture. So in one way and another the inst.i.tution makes sure of having in tribute all that the richly peopled waters of the Mediterranean can offer. And this well-regulated system of collecting, combined with the richness of the fauna and flora of the Bay of Naples, has no small share in the success of the marine laboratory. But these, of course, were factors that Dr. Dohrn took into account from the beginning.

Indeed, it was precisely with an eye to these important factors that Naples was selected as the site of the future laboratory in the days when the project was forming.

The Bay of Naples is most happily located for the needs of the zoologist. It is not too far south to exclude the fauna of the temperate zone, yet far enough south to furnish a habitat for many forms of life almost tropical in character. It has, in short, a most varied and abundant fauna. And, on the other hand, the large colony of Neapolitan fishermen made it certain that skilled collectors would always be at hand to make available the wealth of material. It requires no technical education to appreciate the value of this to the original investigator, particularly to the student of life problems. A skilful worker may do much with a single specimen, as, for example, Johannes Muller did half a century ago with the one available specimen of amphioxus, the lowest of vertebrates, then recently discovered. What Muller learned from that one specimen seems almost miraculous. But what if he had had a bucketful of the little boneless creatures at his disposal, as the worker at Naples now may have any day for the asking?

When it comes to problems of development, of heredity, a profusion of material is almost a necessity. But here the creatures of the sea respond to the call with amazing proficiency. Most of them are, of course, oviparous, and it is quite the rule for them to deposit their eggs by hundreds of thousands, by millions even. Everybody knows, since Darwin taught us, that the average number of offspring of any given species of animal or plant bears an inverse proportion to the liability of that species to juvenile fatalities. When, therefore, we find a fish or a lobster or other pelagic creature depositing innumerable eggs, we may feel perfectly sure that the vast majority of the eggs themselves, or the callow creatures that come out of them, will furnish food for their neighbors at an early day. It is an unkind world into which the resident of the deep is born. But his adversity is his human contemporary's gain, and the biologist will hardly be blamed, even by the most tender-hearted anti-vivisectionist, for availing himself freely of material which otherwise would probably serve no better purpose than to appease the appet.i.te of some rapacious fish.

Their abundance is not the only merit, however, of the eggs of pelagic creatures, in the eyes of the biologist. By equal good-fortune it chances that colorless things are at a premium in the sea, since to escape the eye of your enemy is a prime consideration. So the eggs in question are usually transparent, and thus, shielded from the vision of marine enemies, are beautifully adapted for the observation of the biologist. As a final merit, they are mostly of convenient size for manipulation under the microscope. For many reasons, then, the marine egg offers incomparable advantages to the student of cell life, an egg being the typical cell. And since nowadays the cell is the very focus of attention in the biological world, the importance of marine laboratories has been enhanced proportionately.

But of course not all the work can be done with eggs or with living specimens of any kind. It is equally important on occasion to examine the tissues of adult specimens, and for this, as a rule, the tissues must first be subjected to some preserving and hardening process preliminary to the cutting of sections for microscopical examination.

This is done simply enough in the case of some organisms, but there is a large cla.s.s of filmy, tenuous, fragile creatures in the sea population of which the jellyfish may be mentioned as familiar examples. Such creatures, when treated in an ordinary way, by dropping them into alcohol, shrivel up, coming to resemble nothing in particular, and ceasing to have any value for the study of normal structures. How to overcome this difficulty was one of the problems attacked from the beginning at the Naples laboratory. The chief part of the practical work of these experiments fell to the share of Signor Lo Bianco. The success that attended his efforts is remarkable. To-day you may see at the laboratory all manner of filmy, diaphanous creatures preserved in alcohol, retaining every jot of their natural contour, and thus offering unexampled opportunities for study _en ma.s.se_, or for being sectioned for the microscope. The methods by which this surprising result has been accomplished are naturally different for different creatures; Signor Lo Bianco has written a book telling how it all has been done. Perhaps the most important principle involved with a majority of the more tenuous forms is to stupefy the animal by gradually adding small quant.i.ties of a drug, such as chloral, to the water in which the creature is detained.

When by this means the animal has been rendered so insensible that it responds very sluggishly to stimuli, it is plunged into a toxic solution, usually formaline, which kills it so suddenly that its muscles in their benumbed state have not time to contract.

Any one who has ever tried to preserve a jellyfish, for example, by ordinary methods will recall the sorry result, and be prepared to appreciate Signor Lo Bianco's wonderfully beautiful specimens.

Naturalists have come from all over the world to Naples to learn "just how" the miracle is accomplished, for it must be understood that the mere citation of the _modus operandi_ by no means enables the novitiate to apply it successfully at once. In the case of some of the long-drawn-out forms of cl.u.s.tered ascidians and the like, the delicacy of manipulation required to make successful preservations raises the method as practised at Naples almost to the level of a fine art. It is a boon to naturalists everywhere that the inst.i.tution here is able sometimes to supply other laboratories less favorably situated with duplicates from its wealth of beautifully preserved specimens.

METHODS AND RESULTS

These, then, are some of the material conditions that have contributed to make the results of the scientific investigations at the Naples laboratory notable. But of course, even with a superabundance of material, discoveries do not make themselves. "Who uses this material?"

is, after all, the vital question. And in this regard the laboratory at Naples presents, for any one who gets at its heart, so to speak, an ensemble that is distinctive enough; for the men who work in the light and airy rooms of the laboratory proper have come for the purpose from all corners of the civilized globe, and not a few of them are men of the highest distinction in their various lines of biological science.

A large proportion are professors in colleges and universities of their various countries; and for the rest there is scarcely one who is not in some sense master of the biological craft. For it must be understood that this laboratory at Naples is not intended as a training-school for the apprentice. It offers in the widest sense a university course in biology, and that alone. There is no instructor here who shows the new-comer how to use the microscope, how to utilize the material, how to go about the business of discovery. The worker who comes to Naples is supposed to have learned all these things long before. He is merely asked, then, what cla.s.s of material he desires, and, this being furnished him, he is permitted to go his own way unmolested. He may work much or little, or not at all; he may make epochal discoveries or no discoveries of any sort, and it will be all one to the management. No one will ask him, in any event, what he has done or why he has not done otherwise. In a word, the worker in the laboratory here, while being supplied with opportunities for study such as he could hardly find elsewhere, retains all the freedom of his own private laboratory.

Little wonder, then, that it is regarded as a rare privilege to be allowed to work in this laboratory. Fortunately, however, it is a privilege that may be obtained by almost any earnest worker who, having learned the technique of the craft elsewhere, desires now to prosecute special original studies in biology. Most of the tables here are leased in perpetuity, for a fixed sum per annum, by various public or private inst.i.tutions of different countries. Thus, for example, America has the right of use of several tables, the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution leasing one, Columbia University another, a woman's league a third, and so on. Any American desiring to work at Naples should make application to one of these various sources, stating the exact time when he would like to go, and if there be a vacancy for that time the properly accredited applicant is almost sure to receive the privilege he asks for. Failing in this, however, there is still a court of last appeal in Dr. Dohrn himself, who may have a few unoccupied tables at his disposal, and who will surely extend the courtesy of their occupancy, for a reasonable period, to any proper applicant, come he whence he may.

Thus it chances that one finds men of all nations working in the Naples laboratory--biologists from all over Europe, including Russia, from America, from Australia, from j.a.pan. One finds women also, but these, I believe, are usually from America. Biologists who at home are at the head of fully equipped laboratories come here to profit by the wealth of material, as well as to keep an eye upon the newest methods of their craft, and to gain the inspiration of contact with other workers in allied fields. Many of the German university teachers, for example, make regular pilgrimages to Naples during their vacations, and more than one of them have made the original investigations here that have given them an international reputation.

As to the exact methods of study employed by the individual workers here, little need be said. In this regard, as in regard to instrumental equipment, one biological laboratory is necessarily much like another, and the general conditions of original scientific experiment are pretty much the same everywhere. What is needed is, first, an appreciation of the logical bearings of the problem to be solved; and, secondly, the skill and patience to carry out long lines of experiments, many of which necessarily lead to no tangible result. The selection of material for the experiments planned, the watching and cultivating of the living forms in the laboratory tanks, the cutting of numberless filmy sections for microscopical examination--these things, variously modified for each case, make up the work of the laboratory student of general biology.

And just in proportion as the experiments are logically planned and carefully executed will the results be valuable, even though they be but negative. Just in proportion as the worker, by inclusion and exclusion, attains authentic results--results that will bear the test of repet.i.tion--does his reputation as a dependable working biologist become established.

The subjects attacked in the marine laboratory first and last are practically coextensive with the range of general biology, bacteriology excepted. Naturally enough, the life histories of marine forms of animals and plants have come in for a full share of attention. But, as I have already intimated, this zoological work forms only a small part of the investigations undertaken here, for in the main the workers prefer to attack those general biological problems which in their broader outlines apply to all forms of living beings, from highest to lowest.

For example, Dr. Driesch, the well-known Leipzig biologist, spends several months of each year at the laboratory, and has made here most of those studies of cell activities with which his name is a.s.sociated.

The past season he has studied an interesting and important problem of heredity, endeavoring to ascertain the respective shares of the male and female parents in the development of the offspring. The subjects of his experiments have been various species of sea-urchins, but the principles discovered will doubtless be found to apply to most, or perhaps all, forms of vertebrate life as well.

While these studies were under way another developmental problem was being attacked in a neighboring room of the laboratory by Professor Kitasato, of the University of Tokio, j.a.pan. The subjects this time were the embryos of certain fishes, and the investigation had to do with the development of instructive monstrosities through carefully designed series of injuries inflicted upon the embryo at various stages of its development. Meantime another stage of the developmental history of organic things--this time a microscopical detail regarding the cell divisions of certain plants--has been studied by Professor Mottier, of Indiana; while another American botanist, Professor Swingle, of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, has been going so far afield from marine subjects as to investigate the very practical subject of the fertilization of figs as practised by the agriculturists about Naples.

Even from these few citations it will appear how varied are the lines of attack of a single biological problem; for here we see, at the hands of a few workers, a great variety of forms of life--radiates, insects, vertebrates, low marine plants and high terrestrial ones--made to contribute to the elucidation of various phases of one general topic, the all-important subject of heredity. All these studies are conducted in absolute independence, and to casual inspection they might seem to have little affinity with one another; yet in reality they all trench upon the same territory, and each in its own way tends to throw light upon a topic which, in some of its phases, is of the utmost practical importance to the human family. It is a long vault from the embryo of an obscure sea-weed to the well-being of man, yet it may well happen--so wide in their application are the general life principles--that study of the one may point a practical moral for the other.

Indeed, it constantly happens that the student of biology, while gazing through his microscope, hits upon discoveries that have the most far-removed implications. Thus a few years ago it was discovered that when a cell is about to bisect itself and become two cells, its nucleus undergoes a curious transformation. Within the nuclear substance little bodies are developed, usually threadlike in form, which take on a deep stain, and which the biologist calls chromosomes. These chromosomes vary in number in the cells of different animals, but the number is always the same for any given species of animal. If one were to group animate beings in cla.s.ses according to this very fundamental quality of the cells he would have some very curious relations established. Thus, under the heading "creatures whose cells have twenty-four chromosomes," one would find beings so different as "the mouse, the salamander, the trout, and the lily," while the sixteen-chromosome group would introduce the very startling a.s.sociation of the ox, the guinea-pig, the onion, and man himself. But whatever their number, the chromosomes are always exactly bisected before the cell divides, one-half being apportioned to each of the two cells resulting from the division.

Now the application is this: It was the study of these odd nuclear structures and their peculiar manouvrings that, in large measure, led Professor Weismann to his well-known theory of heredity, according to which the acquired traits of any being are not transmissible to the offspring. Professor Weismann came to believe that the apportionment of the nuclear substance, though quant.i.tatively impartial, is sometimes radically uneven in quality; in particular, that the first bisection of the egg-cell, which marks the beginning of embryonic development, produces two cells utterly different in potentiality, the one containing the "body plasm," which is to develop the main animal structures, the other encompa.s.sing the "germ plasm," by which the racial integrity is [to be preserved. Throughout the life of the individual, he believed, this isolation continued; hence the a.s.sumed lack of influence of acquired bodily traits upon the germ plasm and its engendered offspring.

Hence, also, the application of the microscopical discovery to the deepest questions of human social evolution.

Every one will recall that this theory, born of the laboratory, made a tremendous commotion in the outside world. Its application to the welfare and progress of humanity gave it supreme interest, and polemics unnumbered were launched in its favor and in its condemnation. Eager search was made throughout the fields of botany and zoology for new evidence pro or con. But the definitive answer came finally from the same field of exploration in which the theory had been originated--the world of the cell--and the Marine Biological Laboratory was the seat of the new series of experiments which demonstrated the untenability of the Weismannian position. Most curious experiments they were, for in effect they consisted of the making of two or more living creatures out of one, in the case of beings so highly organized as the sea-urchins, the little fishlike vertebrate, amphioxus, and even the lower orders of true fishes. Of course the division of one being to form two is perfectly familiar in the case of those lowly, single-celled creatures such as the protozoa and the bacteria, but it seems quite another matter when one thinks of cutting a fish in two and having two complete living fish remaining. Yet this is virtually what the biologists did.

Let me hasten to add that the miraculous feat was not accomplished with an adult fish. On the contrary, it is found necessary to take the subject quite at the beginning of its career, when it consists of an egg-cell in the earliest stages of proliferation. Yet the principle is quite the same, for the adult organism is, after all, nothing more than an aggregation of cells resulting from repeated divisions (growth accompanying) and redivisions of that original egg-cell. Considering its potentialities, the egg-cell, seemingly, is as much ent.i.tled to be considered an individual as is the developed organism. Yet it transpires that the biologist has been able so to manipulate a developing egg-cell, after its bisection, that the two halves fall apart, and that each half (now become an independent cell) develops into a complete individual, instead of the half-individual for which it seemed destined. A strange trick, that, to play with an individual _Ego_, is it not?

The traditional hydra with its reanimating heads was nothing to this scientific hydra, which, when bisected bodily, rises up calmly as two whole bodies.

But even this is not the full measure of the achievement, for it has been found that in some cases the experiment may be delayed until the developing egg has made a second bisection, thus reaching the four-cell stage, when four completely formed individuals emerge from the dismembered egg. And in the case of certain medusae, success has attended experiments made at the eight-cell and even at the sixteen-cell stage of development, the creature which had got thus far on its career in single blessedness becoming eight or sixteen individuals at the wave of the enchanted wand--that is to say, the dissecting-needle--of the biologist. All of which savors of conjury, but is really only matter-of-fact biological experiment--experiment, however, of which the implications by no means confine themselves to matters of fact biological. For clearly the fact that the separated egg-cells grow into complete individuals shows that Weismann's theory, according to which one of the cells contained only body plasm, the other only germ plasm, is quite untenable. Thus the theory of the non-transmissibility of acquired characters is deprived of its supposed anatomical support and left quite in the air, to the imminent peril of a school of sociologists who had built thereon new theories of human progress. Also the question of the multiplied personalities clearly extends far beyond the field of the biologist, and must be turned over to the consideration of the psychologist--if, indeed, it does not fall rather within the scope of the moralist.

But though it thus often chances that the biologist, while gazing stoically through his microscope, may discover things in his microcosm that bear very closely upon the practical interests of the most unscientific members of the human family, it would be a mistake to suppose that it is this cla.s.s of facts that the worker is particularly seeking. The truth is that, as a rule, the pure biologist is engaged in work for the love of it, and nothing is further from his thoughts than the "practical" bearings or remote implications of what he may discover.

Indeed, many of his most hotly pursued problems seem utterly divorced from what an outsider would call practical bearings, though, to be sure, one can never tell just what any new path may lead to. Such, for example, is the problem which, next to questions of cell activities, comes in for perhaps as large a share of attention nowadays as any other one biological topic;--namely, the question as to just which of the various orders of invertebrate creatures is the type from which vertebrates were evolved in the past ages--in other words, what invertebrate creature was the direct ancestor of the vertebrates, including man. Clearly it can be of very little practical importance to man of to-day as to just who was his ancestor of several million years ago. But just as clearly the question has interest, and even the layman can understand something of the enthusiasm with which the specialist attacks it.

As yet, it must be admitted, the question is not decisively answered, several rival theories contending for supremacy in the case. One of the most important of these theories had its origin at the Naples laboratory; indeed, Dr. Dohrn himself is its author. This is the view that the type of the invertebrate ancestor is the annelid--a form whose most familiar representative is the earth-worm. The many arguments for and against accepting the credentials of this unaristocratic ancestor cannot be dwelt upon here. But it may be consolatory, in view of the very plebeian character of the earth-worm, to know that various of the annelids of the sea have a much more aristocratic bearing. Thus the filmy and delicately beautiful structures that decorate the pleasant home of the quaint little seahorse in the aquarium--structures having more the appearance of miniature palm-trees than of animals--are really annelids. One can view Dr. Dohrn's theory with a certain added measure of equanimity after he learns this, for the marine annelids are seen, some of them, to be very beautiful creatures, quite fitted to grace their distinguished offspring should they make good their ancestral claims.

These glimpses will suffice, perhaps, to give at least a general idea of the manner of thing which the worker at the marine laboratory is seeking to discover when he interrogates the material that the sea has given him. In regard to the publication of the results of work done at the Naples laboratory, the same liberal spirit prevails that actuates the conduct of the inst.i.tution from first to last. What the investigator dis* covers is regarded as his own intellectual property, and he is absolutely free, so far as the management of this inst.i.tution is concerned, to choose his own medium in giving it to the world. He may, and often does, prefer to make his announcements in periodicals or books issued in his own country and having no connection whatever with the Naples laboratory. But, on the other hand, his work being sufficiently important, he may, if he so desire, find a publisher in the inst.i.tution itself, which issues three different series of important publications, under the editorship of Professor Mayer.

One of these, ent.i.tled _Mittheilungen aus der Zoologische Station zu Neapel_, permits the author to take his choice among four languages--German, English, French, or Italian. It is issued intermittently, as occasion requires. The second set of publications consists of ponderous monographs upon the fauna and flora of the Gulf of Naples. These are beautifully ill.u.s.trated in color, and sometimes a single volume costs as much as seventeen thousand dollars to issue. Of course only a fraction of that sum is ever recovered through sale of the book. The third publication, called _Zoologischen Jahresbericht_, is a valuable resume of biological literature of all languages, keeping the worker at the laboratory in touch with the discoveries of investigators elsewhere.

The latter end is attained further by the library of the inst.i.tution, which is supplied with all the periodicals of interest to the biologist and with a fine a.s.sortment of technical books. The library-room, aside from its printed contents, is of interest because of its appropriate mural decorations, and because of the bronze portrait busts of the two patron saints of the inst.i.tution, Von Baer and Darwin, which look down inspiringly upon the reader.

All in all, then, it would be hard to find a deficiency in the Stazione Zoologica as an instruement of biological discovery. A long list might be cited of the revelations first brought to light within its walls. And yet, as it seems to me, the greatest value of this inst.i.tution as an educational factor in science--as a biological lever of progress--does not depend so much upon the tangible revelations of fact that have come out of its laboratories as upon other of its influences. Scientific ideas, like all other forms of human thought, move more or less in shoals. Very rarely does a great discovery emanate from an isolated observer. The man who cannot come in contact with other workers in kindred lines becomes more or less insular, narrow, and unfitted for progress. Nowadays, of course, the free communication between different quarters of the globe takes away somewhat from the insularity of any quarter, and each scientist everywhere knows something of what the others are doing, through wide-spread publications. But this can never altogether take the place of personal contact and the inspirational communication from man to man. Hence it is that a rendezvous, where all the men of a craft go from time to time and meet their fellows from all over the world, has an influence for the advancement of the guild which is enormous and unequivocal, even though difficult of direct demonstration.