Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/135

Rh The station is primarily under the direction of Professor Théel as Prefect, while director Dr. Hjalmar Östergren is the very efficient administrator of affairs. Under such leadership one may feel confident that the dream of Lovén and Théel will he fulfilled and that here in Kristineberg, as at Naples, will evolve a great station, not alone for work in marine zoology but as well for the investigation of allied problems in botany, chemistry, hydrography and meteorology. Thus Kristineberg is a link in the chain of the more than fifty world encircling marine biological stations. Here and in Bergen, Kiel, Plymouth, Roscoff, Banyuls-sur-Mer, Villefrance, Trieste, Naples, Batavia, Misaki, San Diego, Pacific Grove, Cold Spring Harbor. Woods Holl, and the other sea-side stations, as well as upon the vessels designed as floating laboratories, investigators are solving the mysteries of life in the sea, the primæval birth-place of life itself.

One is reminded that it is the land of the midnight sun by the twilight lasting until after ten o'clock and the break of dawn at three, when the gulls awaken us with a chorus of hoarse cries like those of migrating geese. One of their number is the laboratory pet. It was taken, as Director Östergren naïvely remarked, "When the parting from its parents was without pain," and reared with no fear of man. It is of adult size and strong enough to fly over land or water wherever it pleases. When hungry, and that is most of the time, it sounds a shrill whistle, throwing its head up and down, until a fish is offered, when it comes to one's hand to be fed. But gradually the racial instinct has been asserted until, at the last, the gull follows the call of the wild