of trustees, presented the laboratory with the beautiful building annexed to this, which was imperatively needed for the growth of the institution, and for the accommodation of the more refined methods of investigation then developing. This was in a way our first footing on a permanent basis; the wooden buildings had always been recognized as temporary accommodations. The war intervened to slow down development, but before the close of the war it was apparent that the existing buildings and equipment were inadequate to measure up to the needs and to the responsibility for the development of biological research with which we were confronted. Efforts began immediately after to secure recognition of America's responsibility for furnishing the best possible marine observatory and to secure the funds necessary for building, equipment and endowment. In this endeavor we received invaluable aid from the National Research Council, which lent our organization its unqualified endorsement and moral support, so sadly needed by a society of impractical professors. It required five years to secure the necessary pledges and now at the end of the sixth year of effort we enter upon the enjoyment of the fulfilled expectation. These years were, I believe, well spent in the prolonged and painstaking studies led by the assistant director, Dr. Gilman A. Drew, and the architect, Mr. Charles Coolidge, to ensure the best kind of building for the most advanced types of biological research. I doubt if so large a body of experts as those called in consultation here ever combined their advice in the construction and equipment of a laboratory building. The defects of this building, whatever they may be, are certainly not due to any lack of foresight. There may possibly have been confusion of counsel, though the spirit of combined action in a common cause reduced even this to a minimum. The present occasion is clouded by the absence of Dr. Drew, owing to continued ill-health, towards which his unremitting labors on this building were certainly a contributing cause. The amount raised for the purposes described was $1,648,000. The donors were The Friendship Fund (Mr. C. R. Crane, president), Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., The Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation. Of this amount $900,000 has been invested in securities, and placed in the hands of a trust company as a permanent endowment fund. The balance, amounting to $748,000, has been expended on the building and equipment or set to credit of the latter. The total resources of the laboratory now amount to considerably over $2,000,000. The immediate purposes of this building are explained by the progress of the biologcial sciences in the last twenty-five years. During the nineteenth century a large part of the descriptive functions of biological investigation was accomplished, whether in the identification, naming and description of the various species of animals and plants or in the comprehensive study of their gross or microscopical anatomical structure or of their stages of development or of their distribution in space and time. Accompanying these descriptive disciplines, theoretical interpretations, as in the evolution theory and the cell-theory as instances, were developed. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, also, in proportion as descriptive disciplines laid bare the problems, experimental methods of analysis of these problems arose. The raison d'être of this tendency is not difficult to see: in the first place the experimental method had established itself in physics and in chemistry and in certain of the medical sciences as the only method for a progressive attack on the problems of these sciences, and had justified itself by the control thus acquired over natural processes; and in the second place it was becoming apparent that all vital processes were susceptible of analysis into chemical and physical processes, to an extent at least that justified the expectation of far-reaching control. Fundamental biological analysis requires experiment and also the facilities of chemical and physical laboratories, joined to the equipment of a biological laboratory. Such experiments were begun by Jacques Loeb, Albert Mathews and others in our old wooden buildings, but the inadequacy of such structures for thorough exploitation of the problems soon became manifest. Hence the first of our permanent buildings was erected in 1913. Since then there has been a rapidly increasing rate of development of the experimental method in biology, and it has long been apparent that in order to continue to serve the interests of biological science in America a building of the type of this new one was required. We have often been asked, seeing that our work lies so largely in the summer months, why we could not be satisfied with additional wooden buildings. We are not convinced that the work will always continue to be so exclusively confined to summer months; there is already a pronounced tendency for it to spread into the spring and into the autumn. However, a conclusive reason is that operations of extreme delicacy, as in measurements of minutest electrical fluctuations or thousandths of a degree of temperature, are involved in certain experimental work, and that the greatest possible degree of stability of the building is required for such work, and other work also. Hence such buildings must be constructed solidly of steel and cement. You will find in this building arrangements for the study of X-ray and other radiations on protoplasm, arrangements for study of minutest electrical and thermal variations, arrangements in dark rooms for studying all phases of the effects of light upon protoplasm, rooms for studying the chemistry of protoplasm and its constituent parts, photographic, cold storage and constant temperature rooms, laboratories for more strictly biological work, large supply rooms and a machine shop for manufacture of apparatus. To each work-room fresh water, sea-water, electrical current, both direct and indirect, capable of regulation as to voltage, and gas are supplied. Across the street is a small but very efficient pumping plant. In constructing this building we also took account of the rapidly growing needs of our library and have provided stack rooms for 100,000 volumes, a commodious reading room and librarians', cataloguing and work rooms. Finally, this beautiful auditorium will provide for our public lectures and meetings, which have hitherto been so poorly housed. The laboratory is a research, teaching, cooperative, national and international institution covering all fields of biology, with roots of gradual growth firmly planted in American soil. This is claiming much, but we dare not adventure less. May all our friends aid us in the effort to live up to these declared ideals! EXTRACTS FROM REMARKS BY PROFESSOR EDMUND B. WILSON Professor Wilson, who referred to himself as the "oldest inhabitant," recalled memories of the U. S. Fish Commission and the "M. B. L." extending back over a period of nearly fifty years. He emphasized the astonishing contrast between the primitive conditions of the early years at Woods Hole and the splendid development that ensued. Recalling some of the earlier leaders who shaped the destinies of biological work at Woods Hole, Professor Wilson continued: Among the memories of those earlier days there are two dominating figures, which in this company I do not need to name-Spencer F. Baird and Charles 0. Whitman; Baird, the discoverer of biological Woods Hole, the man who first clearly saw the possibilities of the place for a great center of biological work, and the founder of the U. S. Fish Commission; Whitman, the creator and first director of the M. B. L. It was my good fortune to know both of them well, and I esteem it an especial privilege to pay my tribute of homage to them to-day. The two men were widely different, in some respects diametrical opposites. Baird was a typical American, and he looked the part. I have heard it said that he seemed like a fine old Yankee farmer-which I take to have been a com pliment both to the farmer and to Baird. He was a man of forceful but winning personality. I seem to see him at this moment strolling along the road out there his burly figure; his rather slow, ponderous and rolling gait; his bright and expressive eye. I recall his friendly manner, and seem to hear his characteristic voice-rather high pitched, cultivated and pleasant to the ear. He was an eminent naturalist of the old school, trained as a field collector and systematist, distinguished as an ornithologist, mammalogist and ichthyologist. I am afraid he had not overmuch sympathy with what was then the new movement in biology, and I remember hearing him give emphatic expression to this attitude-very likely as a friendly reproof to an excess of zeal on the part of some youngster. But Baird was a great man, able, forward-looking and large-minded. He was not only a scientific leader but also an excellent business man and executive; and the respect and confidence inspired by his personality and character were important factors in securing from Congress the funds needed to carry on the long-continued and valuable work of the U. S. Fish Commission. All honor be his! Whitman was in some respects of very different stamp, far less a man of the world, but no less than Baird a leader of men. His manner was quiet and rather reserved; but, like Baird, he possessed an indefinable personal charm and magnetism that was an important factor in his leadership. He too was a good naturalist and a large part of his time in later life was passed in the study of animal behavior. But Whitman was essentially a product of European laboratories, as Baird was a product of American studies in natural history. He was what we irreverently used to call a "section-cutter"-an excellent technician, a close student of the finest details of development and cell-structure. Together with Charles S. Minot and Edward L. Mark, he was among the first to introduce into this country the refinements of laboratory technique in zoological work. Whatever he undertook was carried out with deliberate and exact care; and there was a certain artistic quality about his work that used to remind me of that remarkable man, Theodor Boveri. This quality set him apart from most of the men of his time and marked a new standard of work for all of us who came into close touch with him. He was a hard fighter, unsparing, almost bitter, in his criticism of what he considered careless or superficial work, but quick to appreciate and encourage merit on the part of younger investigators. In these respects he often made me think of my dear old friend, Anton Dohrn, one of the great leaders of zoology in his time, and the creator of the Naples Zoological Station. If the truth must be told, Whitman was not exactly what might be called an ideal business man- -in fact, his methods (or lack of them) would have filled Baird with holy horror. He used to argue half seriously that a financial deficit was an excellent thing for any laboratory; and in his time the M. B. L., as a matter of fact, always had one. Why waste money, Whitman would say, on fire insurance for the old wooden buildings? Long experience has proved that they are absolutely fireproof-you couldn't set fire to them if you tried— not if you soaked them in turpentine and benzine and put a Bunsen burner under them! Different as Baird and Whitman were, they possessed certain great and shining virtues in common. Both were men of vision, of imagination, of high ideals and ambitions, steadfast in purpose and forceful in character. Perhaps it may surprise some of you to learn that long before the M. B. L. was born, or thought of, Baird, like Whitman, ardently cherished the ideal of making Woods Hole a great center of cooperative work in biology in which colleges, universities and research institutions should come together in friendly association and rivalry. In Baird's time this was but a romantic dream-one that he did not live to see realized, that perhaps never could have been realized under purely governmental support and administration. Whitman made it a living reality; Lillie, ably seconded by Drew, has brought it to the full fruition, which to-day we celebrate. I would like to think that the disembodied spirits of Baird and Whitman might on this happy occasion be floating around somewhere up there to-day in the blue empyrean and watching our doings here. Could they do so I know they would shake hands (or wings) and go their way rejoicing. Perhaps in the course of my less serious remarks I may here and there have spoken too lightly of the remarkable modern development of the M. B. L. But if, in contrasting the past with the present era of high civilization and efficiency, I have in some degree fallen into the superior and cantankerous tone that is a common vice among the antiquated survivors of earlier and simpler days, let me assure you that it was in order to end with a serious moral. It is very short. It may be summed up by reminding you that the really important thing in the life of an institution, as in that of an individual, is not the gun but the man behind it. This is, of course, a platitude; but you must permit the oldest inhabitant to remark that great gifts and splendid new opportunities impose great responsibilities and duties. Our generous friends have given to us with overflowing hands, all and more than all, that we have asked for. They have given us more than land, buildings, equipment and endowment. They have given moral support, they have put their faith in us. That faith, I believe, has thus far been justified by our past and our present. We must justify it by our future. We shall fail if in any degree we relax our efforts, if we lie back on our oars and stop to admire the scenery. We must pull harder than ever. And above all things let us hold fast to the spirit of the M. B. L. One of our shining virtues under the leadership of Whitman and of Lillie has been a singular freedom from the vices of self-advertising, over-organization, administrative red tape, machine-made research. For heaven's sake let us strive to keep our future free from these detestable practices. And here's wishing the M. B. L. a steady forward march in achievement and in glory; and may we not forget those who came before us. ADDRESS OF PROFESSOR EDWIN G. CONKLIN The address of Professor Edwin G. Conklin, of Princeton University, was entitled "The changing face of nature and of man at Woods Hole," and was illustrated by numerous lantern slides. He briefly recounted the history of the discovery and naming of "Cape Cod," "Martha's Vineyard" and the "Elizabeth Islands" by Gosnold in 1602 and his planting of the first English settlement in America on the site of the present Falmouth in that year. This settlement was soon abandoned and the present town of Falmouth, including Woods Hole, was first permanently settled in 1660. In 1606 Champlain sailed along this coast as far as the present Woods Hole and, mistaking the "Hole" or channel between Buzzards Bay and Vineyard Sound for a river, gave to it his own name. The historian, E. G. Bourne, has suggested that it should now be called "Champlain Strait," but the Yankee preference for plain and homely names still prevails. There were many stirring events in the vicinity of Woods Hole during the American Revolution and the War of 1812. British war vessels were often in Vineyard Sound and especially at Tarpaulin Cove. On April 1, 1779, a British fleet of ten sails visited Woods Hole, and marines from these ships killed cattle and attempted to burn houses, but were driven off. They returned April 3 and cannonaded Falmouth but were prevented from landing by four companies of militia of about two hundred men. At one time a schooner laden with corn from Connecticut was seized by a British privateer as she was entering the sound and taken to Tarpaulin Cove. Colonel Dimmick, who commanded the militia of the town, was notified of this and with twenty men in three whale boats he pulled to the cove, seized the schooner and T sailed away with her, finally bringing her into the harbor at Woods Hole. In 1812 the British Frigate Nimrod bombarded Falmouth and destroyed many buildings and later landed marines at Little Harbor, Woods Hole. Some of these events in the early history of Woods Hole were illustrated by lantern slides from sketches, paintings and old photographs made by Mr. Frank L. Gifford. Some of the most interesting of these pictures were of the whaling industry at Woods Hole, which lasted from about 1815 to 1860. During this period Woods Hole was an important center of this industry and its wharves and buildings were located on what is now property of the Marine Biological Laboratory. The old Stone Building, now occupied by the supply department, was built in 1829 and was known as the "candle factory"; here oil was stored and spermaceti candles made, and evidences of this former use are still seen in the old flues, hearths and cranes in the building. Adjoining the candle factory was a large frame building known as the "bake shop," where all the bread and hardtack was baked for the use of crews of whale ships; this building is now the laboratory's carpenter shop. In front of these buildings was the Bar Neck Wharf, at which whale ships discharged their cargoes; it is now the property of the laboratory and is occupied in part by the Penzance Garage. Although originally covered by forests the region around Woods Hole was practically treeless in 1850. About that time Mr. Joseph S. Fay began to buy barren, rocky farms in this vicinity and to reforest them, importing and planting many trees on his estate. The "Fay Woods," with their woodroads, which were open to the public, were the joy of early workers at the laboratory, but they are now sadly depleted by the gypsy moth and the inroads of civilization. The history of Woods Hole as a biological center began in 1871, when Spencer F. Baird, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, was made the first commissioner of the United States Fish Commission, which had just been established by Act of Congress. Baird opened a laboratory in an old shed on the Lighthouse Board's wharf in Little Harbor in the summer of 1871. During the three following summers he conducted work at Eastport and Portland, Maine, and at Noank, Connecticut, and in 1875 he again came back to Woods Hole, where a laboratory was fitted up on the Government Wharf in Little Harbor, of which Baird said in his "Report" (1876): "With the exception of the building erected by Professor Agassiz at Penikese it is the first formal and permanent sea coast laboratory, constructed and put into operation especially for the purpose, in the United States." From 1877 to 1880 the work of the Fish Commission was carried on at Salem and Halifax, Gloucester, Provincetown, Newport, and after having tried out these places Baird decided that Woods Hole was the best place for the permanent laboratory of the fish commission. In his "Report" for 1882 he wrote: "After careful consideration of the subject, the choice was found to lie between two stations, Woods Hole and Newport." The former was finally chosen because the sea water there was exceptionally pure, free from sediment or contamination with sewage, while there were strong tide currents and no large rivers to reduce the salinity of the water. Accordingly the Fish Commission Laboratory was permanently established at Woods Hole in 1881, the land belonging to the present Fisheries Bureau was acquired, and in the following year the present laboratory, wharf and pool were built. In 1886 the "residence" for workers at the laboratory was built, and there Baird died in the summer of that year. While Woods Hole was thus being selected as the permanent station of the United States Fish Commission another laboratory, short-lived but of great influence, was established by Louis Agassiz on Penikese, one of the Elizabeth Islands, only fifteen miles distant from Woods Hole. This small island about two thirds of a mile long and half as broad, was given to Professor Agassiz by Mr. Anderson for the purpose of establishing there a summer school of natural history, and a large laboratory and dormitory building was erected and the school opened in the summer of 1873. This was, according to Professor Whitman, "the first seaside school of natural history." Louis Agassiz died in December, 1873, and the school was continued in the following summer under the direction of his son, Alexander Agassiz, and was then abandoned, owing chiefly to its inaccessibility. The influence of the Penikese School was out of all proportion to its length of life; during its brief existence many subsequent leaders in American biology studied or taught there, among these, W. K. Brooks, Cornelia Clapp, Alpheus Hyatt, David Starr Jordan, Charles Sedgwick Minot, Edward S. Morse, C. O. Whitman, Burt G. Wilder and many others. In his address at the opening of the Marine Biological Laboratory in 1888 Professor Whitman said: At the close of the second and last session at Penikese in 1874 Alexander Agassiz appealed to the colleges and all interested Boards of Education for support; but all in vain, for not a single favorable reply was received, and so his intention to remove the laboratory to Woods Hole was never carried out. Thus that great and memorable undertaking, after absorbing money enough to build and equip a most magnificent laboratory, was abandoned for lack of interest on the part of educational institutions rather than of means. The Marine Biological Laboratory is the immediate outgrowth of a seaside laboratory conducted at Annisquam, Massachusetts, from 1880 to 1886 by the Woman's Education Association of Boston in cooperation with the Boston Society of Natural History. The Annisquam Laboratory was organized to serve the same ends as the Penikese School. Its promoter and director was Alpheus Hyatt, curator of the Boston Society of Natural History, student of Agassiz and inheritor of the Penikese ideal. At first this laboratory was located in half of his own house and later in an old barn remodeled for the purpose. At the end of the sixth session letters were sent out to persons and institutions that might be interested inviting cooperation in establishing a larger and more permanent laboratory. A preliminary meeting was held at the Boston Society of Natural History in March, 1887, when it was decided to raise $15,000 to found a new laboratory. In the course of the next year about $10,000 was raised and on March 20, 1888, the Marine Biological Laboratory was incorporated. The first annual report of the laboratory says that "differences of opinion as to location, policy, etc., were difficult to reconcile," but Woods Hole was finally chosen because Baird had selected it for the Fish Commission Station after ten years of experience up and down the coast from Eastport, Maine, to Crisfield, Maryland. A small plot of land, seventy-eight by one hundred and twenty feet, near the Fisheries Station, was bought for about $1,300 and a two-story, frame building twenty-eight by sixty-three feet was erected on it, which with its water supply cost about $4,000. In the founding of the Marine Biological Laboratory Alpheus Hyatt was the leading spirit, and for two years he served as president of the trustees. Associated with him as founders of the laboratory we must include three other Penikesians, C. S. Minot, W. K. Brooks and C. O. Whitman. Their names, together with that of Agassiz, are now commemorated in the names of the roads on the Gansett property of the laboratory. The next step was to find a suitable director. Professor Clarke, of Williams College, was offered the post but felt obliged to decline because of ill-health and because he felt there was small chance of success. Professor Whitman, of Clark University, was then offered the directorship and accepted; and it is no disparagement of what others have done to say that the character of this laboratory is due to Whitman more than to any other person. Whitman was in a peculiar sense a product of Penikese. A graduate of Bowdoin College and a teacher of Latin in the English High In his inaugural address at the opening of this laboratory Professor Whitman clearly indicated what these ideals were. "There is great need," he said, "for a laboratory which shall represent (1) the whole of biology, (2) both teaching and research, (3) the widest possible cooperation of educational and scientific institutions. Such a laboratory should not be merely a collecting station, nor a summer school, nor a scientific workshop, nor a congress of biologists, but all these; an institution combining in itself the functions and features of the best biological institutes in the world, having the cooperation of the biologists of this country, and thus forming a national center of research in every department of biology." Again in his first annual report he said: The new laboratory at Woods Hole is nothing more and I trust nothing less than a first step toward the establishment of an ideal biological station, organized on a basis broad enough to represent all important features of the several types of laboratories hitherto known in Europe and America. An undertaking of such magnitude can not be a matter of local interest merely and if it be pushed with energy and wisdom, it can not fail to receive the support of the universities, colleges and schools of the country. There was little in the early conditions of the laboratory to justify such high hopes. It began with no assured cooperation, no constituency, a bare building, no library, no private rooms for investigators, only a rowboat for collecting and with only two instructors, seven investigators and eight students. What it has grown to you see for yourselves. It is probably no exaggeration to say that this laboratory is the very best as it is certainly the largest marine biological laboratory in the world. The growth of the laboratory in scientific cooperation was rapid, but for more than twenty years its financial support was uncertain and precarious, and its buildings and facilities were inadequate to its needs. In 1890 an L was added to the original building to serve as a lecture room on the first floor and a library on the second at a cost of about $1,000; also the "Gifford Homestead" with about one half acre of land adjoining the laboratory was bought for |