The Proposed Zoological Stations at Kiel and Heligoland

Abstract

IN NATURE, vol. xiv. p. 535, there appears amongst the occasional Notes, a short report of a proposal of the Association of German Naturalists to found two new Zoological Stations at Kiel and Heligoland. The establishment of such stations could not fail to be of immense service to biology, but it is much to be regretted that the Association is inclined to put aside the claims of the present Zoological Station at Naples in favour of these two new institutions. To act in this way would be both unwise and ungenerous: unwise, because a station on the shores of the Mediterranean can obtain a great variety of forms which are not to be found in the North Sea and the Baltic; and ungenerous because the Naples Station has been the means of proving both the value and feasibility of such institutions, and without it the present proposals would never have originated. It is indeed surprising to see a body of German naturalists refusing their support to an institution like that at Naples, which has already rendered such signal services to biology, in which so many of themselves have made important discoveries, and which is, moreover, founded almost on the site of the classical investigations of Kölliker, Gegenbaur, and Hæckel.