Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/51

Rh that no biologist familiar with either one of these situations has ever studied at the other:

Concerning the scope and auspices of the laboratory all the correspondents are agreed that it should be national in character, and that every possible aid should be given to all competent students, both in the prosecution of their studies and in the publication of results.

Although a tropical laboratory may well remain open during the entire year, the most available months for study are May 1 to August 1. This is the period of calms, which follows the trade wind period of the winter and precedes the hurricane season of the autumn. During late spring and early summer months one may safely go out to sea in small sail boats, and may wade and collect on the windward sides of the reefs, an advantage rarely enjoyed during the winter, when the almost constant trade wind lashes the ocean into foam. There is yet another advantage gained by selecting the summer months for study, for this is the period when numerous larvæ and young forms appear; and few realize who have not been there that there is almost as much difference between the fauna of summer and winter in the tropical ocean as there is along our own temperate shores. With the exception of the Siphonophoræ, almost all forms of pelagic life are much more numerous in spring and summer than during the winter months. These remarks apply especially to the Tortugas and Bahamas, where the calm period is well marked.

This appeal for this laboratory may seem to some to be worthy of but little attention; for abstract laws and facts having little or no bearing upon the practical things of life would chiefly concern its thought, but who may dare to predict the outcome of the study of pure science? Polarized light by means of which we now analyze our sugars, the principles underlying the working of the dynamo, telegraph and telephone; the great law of evolution and the germ theory of disease were all discovered and made known by men who had in mind only the advancement of the sum of human knowledge totally apart from practical results or the acquisition of wealth. Our national progress vast in material has been insignificant in abstract science, yet underlying all practical applications are the laws which men who have studied nature for the simple-love of her ways have found. Too much of our energy is withdrawn from the study of cardinal principles, and too much devoted to the application of established laws to the serving of mere practical ends. Let us have at least one laboratory devoted exclusively to research in science, both pure and applied, and let its course be free from criticism if it be so fortunate as to lead to the discovery of laws even if no money be made thereby.