In keeping with the relatively simple technic of the studies which have made this biologist famous, the Herzstein laboratory is small and inexpensive. It is a plain, one-story wooden building, about forty-five feet square, divided into three fairly good-sized rooms, two small store rooms and a dark room. It is provided with an alternating electric current, and running fresh water, but not with gas or salt water. The small quantities of sea water needed are brought to the laboratory from the nearby sea by hand. A good supply of glassware for experimentation on simple animals is always on hand.
As already indicated, the laboratory is operated in close connection, so far as research is concerned, with the department of physiology at Berkeley. No provision is made or is hardly possible for formal instruction or for any considerable number of investigators, or for much range of investigation.
At present Professor's. S. Maxwell, as head of the department of physiology also has charge of the laboratory. Professor Loeb's use of it has not ceased, although he has severed his connection with the University of California. He has spent considerable time at Pacific Grove during the last two years.
Going on down the coast to southern California, the undertakings at Venice and Laguna Beach must first be noticed in following the geographical order of treatment. Although, as intimated in the opening paragraph, these have not attained a strong and permanent existence, they have been useful as adjuncts to the teaching facilities of the colleges to which they belong, the University of Southern California, and Pomona College. The Venice Station possesses a power launch of sufficient size and equipment to make possible a good amount of collecting at sea. The director of the station is Albert B. Ulrey, professor of zoology in the University of Southern California.
The suggestion may be ventured here that the California coast south of Point Conception ought to have one good teaching sea-side laboratory which should have the support of all the schools and colleges in the south. We biologists of the southwest must, I think, allow that we are aspiring less wisely than are our colleagues of the northwest in the very important matter of promoting sea-side studies by young men and women.
The Scripps Institution for Biological Research being situated at the extreme southern end of the Pacific coast line of the United States must accept last place in this survey.
A somewhat full account of this station was published by the writer in 1912,[1] and the accessibility of this makes an extended statement here superfluous.
- ↑ "The Marine Biological Station of San Diego, Its History, Present Conditions, Achievements and Aims," Univ. of Calif. Publ. in Zool., Vol. 9, No. 4, March 9, 1912, pp. 137-248.
