Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/433

Rh fairly claim to have been for the last quarter-century a great international meeting ground of biologists, and so to have exercised a stimulating and coordinating influence upon biological research which it would be difficult to overestimate.

The success of the institution has caused constant additions and has stimulated the staff to fresh undertakings. To the original aquarium and zoological laboratories a second building mainly for botany and physiology and the preparation of specimens was soon added; and it is said that a third is in contemplation. In the meantime additional accommodation has been obtained during the last decade by a rearrangement of the roof of the main building. This gives space for a second large zoological laboratory, a supplementary library and various smaller rooms, used as chemical and physiological laboratories, for photography

and for bacteriology. A good deal of the research in recent years, both on the part of those occupying work-tables and of the permanent staff, has been in the direction of comparative physiology, experimental embryology and the bacteriology of sea-water, and all necessary facilities for such work are now provided.

The laboratories contain accommodation for over fifty scientific men to work, and each such work-place, known technically as a 'table,' consists either of a small room or of an alcove or a portion screened off from a larger room. Such tables are rented at £100 a year, not to individuals, but to states or universities or committees, and of the fifty-five tables at present available about thirty-four are permanently engaged—thus bringing in a considerable annual subsidy to the