Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/229

Rh be searched with dredge and trawl and fished with long lines, each bearing many baited hooks, and the pelagic animals caught from the side of the vessel. Small boats would be sent out to gather from the rocks and grottoes under the water-line such organisms as the sponges, corals, worms, echinoderms, mollusks and algae. A portion of the catch would be examined by the naturalists on board, another part kept in well aerated aquaria to be taken in the early morning by the Johannes Müller to the Naples Station. In the night-time silk townets would collect from the vast numbers of minute living things that then reappear after having gone below the surface waters to escape the intense sunlight. Stone-plates could be lowered to the sea-bottom in various places to be taken up and examined at regular intervals in order to study the assembling and growth of the sessile organisms that seek such locations. Then these stone-plates might be changed from one place to another, varying the depth, light and other conditions of existence in accord with the method of experimental zoology, with results of the greatest value to the knowledge of the distribution and evolution of marine organisms and scarcely possible except by means of such a floating laboratory. After exploring the sea around Naples the floating laboratory might be taken to the coasts of Sardinia, Tunis, Crete, Cyprus and other regions. The moment anchor is cast the vessel serves as dwelling house and laboratory from which would center all the activities of a marine station. If needed, a portable house, carried on board, could be quickly placed upon any desired shore. In connection with biology other kinds of scientific work such as geology, paleontology and philology might be advanced, with the best possible conservation of all the collections on board the ship, whereas it is often so difficult and dangerous to transport such things from isolated regions by the ordinarily available means. It is easily seen that such a combination would greatly advance the various sciences concerned at the least cost to each. This plan, always in Dohrn's mind, was temporarily laid in the background by the more pressing need of the erection of the building for comparative physiology which absorbed much time in the last years of Dohrn's life. Through the death of F. A. Krupp his promise to build a 700-ton yacht for this deep sea investigation came to naught. Now, although the Prince of Monaco is devoting much time and money to the development of oceanography, and various governments are sending out vessels, yet the field is so large and so important that it is to be. hoped Dohrn's plan will be carried out not alone at Naples, but in America and other countries.

In spite of the time consumed in directing the affairs of the zoological station and in traveling and making addresses in its behalf, Dohrn was always an investigator of the foremost rank. During the half-century of continuous production his bibliography numbers eighty titles. Following in the footsteps of his father, the entomologist Karl