Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/438

428 electric ray in an open shallow tank, and by putting the thumb above and the fingers under the animal's flat shoulders, whilst we pull or squeeze the tail with the other hand, an electric shock can be obtained. Octopus, Squids and other Cuttlefish are present in abundance; crabs that mimic their surroundings, those with anemones and with sponges on their backs, animals that look like plants, corals and sea-fans of many kinds, worms that live in leathery tubes a foot long and expand out of the top, like gorgeous flowers six inches across with innumerable spirally-arranged petals—these seem to be the favorites with visitors. But probably the most interesting tanks to the scientific man are those containing the recently caught 'plankton,' the Medusas and other delicate and gelatinous surface organisms. There is one marvelous creature that can be seen almost nowhere else, the Cestus veneris, which is like an undulating, pulsating band of light, in some positions absolutely transparent, in others flashing iridescent fire like a diamond from its sides. So much for the public aquarium, which, at an admission fee of two francs, brings in to the institution a revenue of about £1,000 a year. Now a word as to the publications of the station.

Workers at Naples are free to publish the results of their investigations where they like, and records of the good work in all departments of biology which has been done at this station are to be found in all civilized countries in the form of memoirs and articles contributed to the scientific periodicals of the world. But still a considerable amount of the whole, including a number of the more extended, more solid and more noteworthy contributions, has been published at Naples as a noble series of monographs on the 'Fauna and Flora of the Gulf of Naples'—each monograph being one or more quarto volumes, richly illustrated, and dealing with one particular group of animals, or a section thereof. This great series, of which 26 monographs have now appeared, is amongst the most cherished possessions of every zoological library. Besides these monographs fourteen volumes of a smaller yearly journal, the 'Mittheilungen,' have been published containing shorter but still important papers, and Dr. Paul Mayer also edits a yearly summary or record, the 'Zoologischer Jahresbericht,' of the advances made in all departments of zoology in all parts of the world.

But although the work of the Naples Zoological Station is thus many-sided, the leading idea is certainly original research. An investigator usually goes to Naples to make some particular discovery, and he goes there because he knows he will find material, facilities and environment such as exist nowhere else in the same favorable combination. As a result of the splendid pioneer work which Dr. Dohrn has done at Naples, every civilized country has now established its own biological stations, some larger, some smaller; but although these are of prime importance amongst scientific institutions, as enabling the young