Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1896 [PAGE 322]

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BIOLOGICAL EXPFRIMENT STATION.

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Finally, if the Station is to be utilized to the fullest extent as a means of instruction to teachers in the public schools, permanent provision for this work must certainly be made. These various needs can be met by the purchase of a small tract of land now lying practically waste, by the erection of a small building on the bank of Quiver Lake which shall combine additional facilities for laboratory investigation with living quarters for the Station staff, by the excavation of ponds on the Station grounds and the construction of a water tank and pump, and by the building of a large pavilion, with some connected rooms, for midsummer work by visiting students. Concerning the immediate future of the work, I beg to say that it is my present wish and intention, if the Station is maintained on a scale and under conditions to make it possible, to extend its work especially along three principal lines. The preliminary systematic survey having been now largely completed, I hope next to select specific problems for solution by experimental methods, working towards definite oecological results of scientific value. Studies of the lower forms of aquatic life in our situation are now so far advanced as to make it profitable to bring into our scheme of regular operations the fishes of these waters. A particularly thorough, continuous, and comprehensive study of them should be made from various points of view, in the hope especially of helping the fish-culturist to more intelligent methods and to more certain and permanent results. Although the Station was founded primarily for investigation and its expenditures up to the present time have all been made directly to that end, it is very apparent that it has a highly important work to perform in the interests of public education. I hope to occupy fully and at once this broad field of usefulness which now lies so plainly open before us, not only by continuing and enlarging our offerings to advanced students and to investigating naturalists, but especially by providing all needed facilities and instruction in field biology and in special pedagogical methods to present and prospective teachers of the natural history subjects in all grades of the public school. As a first step to this object, I have already submitted to you a plan for a summer school of field biology to be opened during the vacation season of next year. This work should, I do not doubt, become a permanent and prominent feature of the Station operations. I ought not to close this general review and presentation of the affairs of the Biological Station without calling your attention to the cordial and appreciative manner in which our enterprise has been received by expert judges of high rank in this country and abroad. Important articles on its work have appeared in several of the leading scientific journals of Europe and America, and our official correspondence also contains many expressions of warm interest in our success from eminent men in various parts of the world. It gives me further pleasure to express to you my high appreciation of the capable, energetic, and successful work of my associates on the Station staff. Neither the broiling heat of the July sun nor the midwinter's cold have been able to interrupt or even to delay the regular progress of the very laborious