Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 11.djvu/720

LABORATORY. Commission of Inland Fisheries has carried on important work on the development and artificial culture of the clam and lobster, and the results have been published by the State.

Several summer laboratories for the study of aquatic life, insects, fishes, etc., as well as for educational purposes, have been established in the Central United States. Of these, the first to be founded, and the one which has been the most productive of results advantageous to science, is that at Havana, Ill., founded by Professor S. A. Forbes. It has published a bulletin, and has from the first shown great activity. In Europe, a well-known fresh-water laboratory has for several years been maintained by Professor Dr. O. Zacharias, at Plön in Germany.

All botanical laboratories equipped for elementary instruction are practically the same. It may be assumed that such establishments provide equipment for fundamental courses in morphology, physiology, ecology, and perhaps taxonomy. In provision for research work, however, botanical laboratories vary widely. There is probably no complete botanical laboratory in the world, in the sense that it provides for every phase of botanical investigation. Each prominent laboratory is strong in one, or perhaps a few, of the many phases of botanical research, and this is recognized by graduate students in selecting a laboratory for definite work. Since the chief opportunity of any botanical laboratory is the staff of men in charge of the work, every laboratory has developed about certain men rather than along theoretical lines. While worthy morphological and physiological laboratories can be developed in connection with any university that has money enough to employ suitable men and furnish them equipment, worthy taxonomic equipment is a matter of historical development. It involves the accumulation of large collections, whose chief value lies in sets of plants that are not in the open market. For example, while there are possibly ten botanical laboratories in the United States in which the opportunities for research in morphology, physiology, and ecology may be regarded from fair to excellent, there are only three, or at most four, points where great historical collections of plants have made valuable research work in taxonomy possible. See.

. The first laboratory for the pursuit of researches in and (qq.v.) was founded by Wilhelm Wundt at Leipzig in 1879. Laboratories have now been established at most of the leading German universities. The first laboratory in the United States was founded at the Johns Hopkins University in 1881 by G. S. Hall, but laboratories are now the rule rather than the exception in American universities and colleges.

France has an excellent laboratory at the Sorbonne, Paris. England has small laboratories at Cambridge and London, but has so far done little for the cause of experimental psychology. Valuable investigations have also come from Denmark (Copenhagen), Sweden (Upsala), Norway (Christiania), Belgium (Liège), Holland (Groningen and Utrecht), Austria (Vienna and Gratz), Russia (Saint Petersburg and Moscow), and Japan (Tokio), some of them from psychological laboratories proper, and some from laboratories of physiology.

The recent development of psychology as a science, the multiplicity of problems that crowd upon the investigator, the varied training of the men who have devoted themselves to psychological experiment, and the makeshifts to which psychologists are forced by inadequate laboratory accommodation, render it exceedingly difficult to give any typical description of the arrangement and furnishing of the psychological laboratory. We may, however, say, without much fear of contradiction, that the ‘ideal’ laboratory would present at least the following features: There should be (1) a large lecture-room or auditorium, capable of seating some 300 hearers, with a good demonstration table and arrangements for lantern projection. Behind the lecture-room, and opening into it, should be (2) a museum or storeroom, in which are displayed not only all the demonstration instruments required for a general lecture course, but also series of standard pieces illustrating the historical development of experimental method. (3) For work in optics, there should be two dark rooms, adjoining and connected, and it would be well if the larger of the two, the anteroom, should have a window opening into the general lecture-room. This anteroom is necessary for the demonstration of certain phenomena of (q.v.), for work on visual adaptation, on association of ideas, etc., etc.; while the inner room is useful for more refined investigation—e.g. for spectrometric research. The window in the side of the lecture-room gives the lecturer a black background against which certain demonstrations can be made, without darkening the lecture-room itself, far more effectually than against a black screen. (4) For acoustics, there should be available a suite of three rooms, one of which should be made, as far as possible, sound-proof, as well as light-proof, and all of which should be connected by acoustic tubes for the transmission of auditory stimuli. (5) For work upon the sense of smell, there should be a special room, with tiled floor and glazed walls and especial ventilating arrangements. The rest of the laboratory proper should be taken up with large rooms, well aired and lighted, for class work in the practice courses; a set of small, closet-like rooms, occupied by advanced students; a series of rooms devoted to observations upon the lower animals; a centrally situated room, containing the measuring instruments (chronoscopes, chronographs, etc.), upon which a call may be made from any part of the laboratory; the private laboratories of the instructing staff; and a library and writing-room. The only other feature of the laboratory that demands separate mention is (6) the workshop, which should be adequately fitted with the tools needed for wood and metal work, and should have an abundant power supply.

The instrumental outfit of the laboratory is described under the heading . A few points as regards furniture and fixtures may be noticed here. Every room should be supplied with gas and electricity, and certain rooms (for which absolute quiet is not essential) with water. The rooms employed for class work should have small, low tables, accommodating each a pair of students, and shallow, glass-fronted wall cases to contain the instruments when not in use. Comfort on the part of the observer is essential to good