Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/231

Rh again in the peristyle of the house of the Vettii. In the present excavations one sees the volcanic debris removed from an atrium wall revealing in its pristine freshness a fresco of the brief period of reconstruction after the earthquake of 63. After the excursions from Naples certain pictures will always linger in the mind. The wonderful panorama from the Camaldulensian monastery extending from the Ponza Islands in the west to Monte Sant' Angelo in the southeast, and embracing the City of Naples with omnipresent Vesuvius in the background, and the islands of Nisida, Procida, Ischia and Capri. The view from the rose-garden of the Palazzo Eufolo, at Ravello, on the heights of Monti Lattari, with the fishing-boats of the bay of Salerno like winged creatures suspended just above the waves and gliding back to the gods who sent them forth. The temple of Neptune at Paestum, having withstood the devastation of wind and storm for twenty-five centuries, rising from the green meadows, with its massive yet graceful fluted Doric columns, sepia tinted by age, outlined against the blue sky and bluer sea. The blue grotto of Capri entered by a hole in the cliff so small that our little skiff scraped the rock, lighted by the sunshine which permeates the water from the one opening, and transformed into a great hall of fairyland with an atmosphere of silvery greenish-blue so clear that the primeval rock of the vaulted cavern is reflected in the shimmering depths below. The naturalists from many countries, all representing different phases of biological work and thought, create a cosmopolitan atmosphere most profitable and inspiring to each investigator. During the year ending March, 1910, there were 163 workers at the zoological station. Thus there is a perpetually changing and yet permanent congress wherein the exchange of ideas is not by means of formal lectures but rather in the conversation of two or three workers in some nook about the buildings, or upon the deck of the Johannes Müller. For the thirty-six years of its existence the Naples Zoological Station has been one of the most potent factors in the development of modern biology, and now this institution world-wide in its influence, stands as the chief monument to the remarkable personality of Anton Dohrn.