dians, and flower-like sea-anemones,
quaint sea-horses, and filmy, fragile jellyfishes and their multiform
kin--all seem novel and wonderful as one sees them in their native
element. Things that appear to be parts of the rocky or sandy bed of the
grottos startle one by moving about, and thus discovering themselves
as living creatures, simulating their environment for purposes of
protection. Or perhaps what seems to be a giant snail suddenly unfurls
wings from its seeming shell, and goes waving through the water, to the
utter bewilderment of the beholder. Such freaks as this are quite
the rule among the strange tribes of the deep, for the crowding of
population there makes the struggle for existence keen, and necessitates
all manner of subterfuges for the preservation of species.

Each and every one of the thirty-odd grottos will repay long
observation, even on the part of the most casual visitor, and when one
has seen them all, he will know more at first hand of the method of life
of the creatures of the sea than all the books could teach him. He will
depart fully satisfied, and probably, if he be the usual sight-seer,
he will never suspect that what he has seen is really but an incidental
part of the institution whose building he has entered. Even though he
note casually the inscription "Stazione Zoologica" above the entrance,
he may never suspect that the aquarium he has just visited is only an
adjunct--the popular exhibit, so to speak--of the famous institution
of technical science known to the English-speaking world as the Marine
Biological Laboratory at Naples. Yet such is the fact. The aquarium
seems worthy enough to exist by and for itself. It is a great popular
educator as well as amuser, yet its importance is utterly insignificant
compared with the technical features of the institution of which it is
an adjunct.

This technical department, the biological laboratory proper, has its
local habitation in the parts of the building not occupied by the
aquarium--parts of which the general public, as a rule, sees nothing.
There is, indeed, little to see that would greatly interest the casual
inspector, for in its outward aspects one laboratory is much like
another, a seeming hodgepodge of water-tanks, glass jars of specimens,
and tables for microscopes. The real status of a laboratory is not
determined by the equipment.

And yet it will not do to press this assertion too far, for in one sense
it is the equipment of