Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 54.djvu/694

672 This is examined and assorted by trained eyes, and placed in tanks of water where siphons are constantly pouring fresh sea water, after which the rubbish is quietly left until accustomed to its new quarters. Then cautiously this rubbish begins to move, the stones stir, and the pulp opens into the beautiful colors, the plants, the gauzy scarfs, and the numerous other strange things afterward shown to the public in the aquarium below.

Along the walls of these upper rooms are jars wherein are preserved many curious denizens of the sea that have been killed by powerful chemicals, which have surprised the delicate animals before their sensitive tentacles have had time to close, thus preserving to science many rare creatures impossible to keep long in captivity.

The great cost of this establishment is maintained in several ways—by the issuing of publications and scientific papers in several languages, by the rents from the desks or tables used by the investigators, and by the unusually large price of admission demanded from the public at the aquarium entrance. In addition to this are the fees from the students who come from afar to study here. A payment of four hundred dollars each gives students the right to study in the Naples zoölogical station for ten months of the year.



HEN the history of education during the nineteenth century comes to be written, one of its most striking features will be presented by the rise and growth of science in the general educational arrangements of every civilized country. At the beginning of the century our schools and colleges were still following, with comparatively little change, the methods and subjects of tuition that had been in use from the time of the middle ages. But the extraordinary development of the physical and natural sciences, which has done so much to alter the ordinary conditions of life, has powerfully affected also our system of public instruction. The mediæval circle of studies has been widely recognized not to supply all the mental training needed in the ampler range of modern requirement. Science has, step by step, gained a footing in the strongholds of the older learning. Not without vehement struggle, however, has she been able to intrench herself there. Even now, although her ultimate victory is assured, the warfare is by no means at an end. The