d at Naples almost to the level of a fine art. It is
a boon to naturalists everywhere that the institution here is able
sometimes to supply other laboratories less favorably situated with
duplicates from its wealth of beautifully preserved specimens.

METHODS AND RESULTS

These, then, are some of the material conditions that have contributed
to make the results of the scientific investigations at the Naples
laboratory notable. But of course, even with a superabundance of
material, discoveries do not make themselves. "Who uses this material?"
is, after all, the vital question. And in this regard the laboratory
at Naples presents, for any one who gets at its heart, so to speak, an
ensemble that is distinctive enough; for the men who work in the light
and airy rooms of the laboratory proper have come for the purpose from
all corners of the civilized globe, and not a few of them are men of
the highest distinction in their various lines of biological science.
A large proportion are professors in colleges and universities of their
various countries; and for the rest there is scarcely one who is not
in some sense master of the biological craft. For it must be understood
that this laboratory at Naples is not intended as a training-school for
the apprentice. It offers in the widest sense a university course in
biology, and that alone. There is no instructor here who shows the
new-comer how to use the microscope, how to utilize the material, how
to go about the business of discovery. The worker who comes to Naples
is supposed to have learned all these things long before. He is
merely asked, then, what class of material he desires, and, this being
furnished him, he is permitted to go his own way unmolested. He may work
much or little, or not at all; he may make epochal discoveries or no
discoveries of any sort, and it will be all one to the management. No
one will ask him, in any event, what he has done or why he has not done
otherwise. In a word, the worker in the laboratory here, while being
supplied with opportunities for study such as he could hardly find
elsewhere, retains all the freedom of his own private laboratory.

Little wonder, then, that it is regarded as a rare privilege to be
allowed to work in this laboratory. Fortunately, however, it is a
privilege that may be obtained by almost any earnest worker who, having
learned the technique of the craft elsewhere, desires now to prosecute
special original studies in bio