Volume V Part 5 (1/2)

They are ribbon-like in tenuousness, and to casual glance they give the impression of long, narrow pennants softly waving in a gentle breeze.

The great conger--five or six feet in length--has, indeed, a certain propensity to extend himself rigidly in a fishlike line and lie immovable, but the other species is always true to his colors, so to say--his form is always outlined in curves.

The eels attract their full share of attention from the visitors, but there is one family of creatures which easily holds the palm over all the others in this regard. These are the various representatives of the great cult of squids and cuttle-fishes. The cuttle-fish proper--who, of course, is no fish at all--is shaped strangely like a diminutive elephant, with a filmy, waving membrane along its sides in lieu of legs.

Like the other members of his clan, he can change his color variously.

Sometimes he is of a dull brown, again prettily mottled; then, with almost kaleidoscopic suddenness, he will a.s.sume a garb beautifully striped in black and white, rivalled by nothing but the coat of the zebra. The cuttle-fish is a sluggish creature, seeking out the darker corners of his grotto, and often lying motionless for long periods together. But not so the little squid. He does not thrive in captivity, and incessantly wings his way back and forth, with slow, wavy flappings of his filmy appendages, until he wears himself out and dies unreconciled.

In marked contrast with both cuttle-fish and squid is their cousin the octopus--a creepy, crawly creature, like eight serpents in one--at once the oddest and the most fascinating creature in the entire aquarium. You will find a crowd almost always before his grotto watching his curious antics. Usually slow and deliberate in movement, he yet has capacity for a certain agility. Now and again he dives off suddenly, head first, through the water, with the directness if not quite with the speed of an arrow. A moment later, tired of his flight, he sprawls his eight webbed legs out in every direction, breaking them seemingly into a thousand joints, and settles back like an animated parachute awreck. Then perchance he perches on a rock knowingly, with the appearance of owl-like wisdom, albeit his head looks surprisingly like a frog's. Anon he holds his head erect and stretches out his long arms in what is most palpably a yawn. Then, for pure diversion, he may hold himself half erect on his umbrella frame of legs and sidle along a sort of quadrille--a veritable ”eight hands in round.”

But all the while he conveys distinctly the impression of a creature to the last degree blase. Even when a crab is let down into his grotto by an attendant for the edification of the visitors the octopus seems to regard it with only lukewarm interest. If he deigns to go in pursuit, it is with the air of one who says, ”Anything to oblige,” rather than of eagerness for a morsel of food. Yet withal, even though unhurried, he usually falls upon the victim with surprising sureness of aim, encompa.s.sing it in his multiform net. Or perhaps, thinking the game hardly worth so much effort, he merely reaches out suddenly with one of his eight arms--each of which is a long-drawn-out hand as well--and grasps the victim and conveys it to his distensible maw without so much as changing his att.i.tude.

All this of the giant octopus--brown and warty and wrinkled and blase.

But the diminutive cousin in the grotto with the jellyfishes is a bird of quite another feather. Physically he is constructed on the same model as the other, but his mentality is utterly opposed. No grand roles for him; his part is comedy. He finds life full of interest. He is satisfied with himself and with the world. He a.s.sumes an aspect of positive rakishness, and intelligence, so to say, beams from his every limb. All day long he must be up and doing. For want of better business he will pursue a shrimp for hours at a time with the zest of a true sportsman.

Now he darts after his intended prey like a fox-hound. Again he resorts to finesse, and sidles off, with eyes fixed in another direction, like a master of stratagem. To be sure, he never catches the shrimp--but what of that? The true sportsman is far removed from the necessity for mere material profit. I half suspect that little octopus would release the shrimp if once he caught him, as the true fisherman throws back the excess of his catch. It is sport, not game, that he covets.

THE LABORATORY AND ITS FOUNDER

When one has made the circuit of the aquarium he will have seen and marvelled at some hundreds of curious creatures utterly unlike anything to be found above water. Brightly colored starfishes, beautiful sea-urchins, strange stationary ascidians, 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 sh.e.l.l, 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 inst.i.tution 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 inst.i.tution 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 inst.i.tution 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, gla.s.s 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 a.s.sertion too far, for in one sense it is the equipment of the Naples laboratory that has made it what it is. Not, however, the equipment in the sense of microscopes and other working paraphernalia. These, of course, are the best of their kind, but machinery alone does not make a great inst.i.tution, any more than clothes make the man. The all-essential and distinctive equipment of the laboratory reveals itself in its personnel. In the present case, as always in a truly great inst.i.tution of any kind, there is one dominating personality, one moving spirit. This is Dr. Anton Dohrn, founder of the laboratory, and still its controller and director, in name and in fact.

More than twenty-five years ago Dr. Dohrn, then a young man fresh from the universities of his native Germany, discovered what he felt to be a real need in the biological world. He was struck with the fact that nowhere in the world could be found an establishment affording good opportunities for the study of marine life. Water covers three-fifths of the earth's surface, as everybody knows, and everywhere this water teems with life, so that a vast preponderance of the living things of the globe find their habitat there. Yet the student who might desire to make special studies of this life would find himself balked at the threshold for want of opportunity.

It was no great thing to discover this paucity, which, indeed, fairly beckoned the discoverer. The great thing was to supply the deficiency, and this was what Dr. Dohrn determined to do. He selected Naples as the best location for the laboratory he proposed to found, because of its climate and its location beside the teeming waters of the Mediterranean.

He organized a laboratory; he called about him a corps of able a.s.sistants; he made the Marine Biological Laboratory at Naples famous, the Mecca of all biological eyes throughout the world. It was not all done in a day. It was far enough from being done without opposition and discouragement; but these are matters of history which Dr. Dohrn now prefers not to dwell upon. Suffice it that the result aimed at was finally achieved, and in far greater measure than could at first be hoped for.

And from that day till this Naples has been the centre of that branch of biological inquiry which has for its object the investigation of problems best studied with material gathered from the sea. And this, let me hasten to add, includes far more than a mere study of the life histories of marine animals and plants as such. It includes problems of cell activity, problems of heredity, life problems of many kinds, having far wider horizons than the mere question as to how a certain fish or crustacean lives and moves and has its being.

Dr. Dohrn's chief technical a.s.sociates are all Germans, like their leader, but, like him also, all gifted with a polyglot mastery of tongues that has stood them in good stead in their intercourse with the biologists of many nationalities who came to work at the laboratory. I must not pause to dwell upon the personnel of the staff in general, but there is one other member who cannot be overlooked even in the most casual survey of the work of the inst.i.tution. One might almost as well forget Dr. Dohrn himself as to overlook Signor Lo Bianco, chief of the collecting department. Signor Bianco it is who, having expert knowledge of the haunts and habits of every manner of marine creature, can direct his fishermen where to find and how to secure whatever rare specimen any worker at the laboratory may desire. He it is, too, who, by studying old methods and inventing new ones, has learned how to preserve the delicate forms for subsequent study in lifelike ensemble that no one else can quite equal. Signor Bianco it is, in short, who is the indispensable right-hand man of the inst.i.tution in all that pertains to its practical working outside the range of the microscope. Each night Signor Lo Bianco directs his band of fishermen as to what particular specimens are most to be sought after next day to meet the needs of the workers in the laboratory. Before sunrise each day, weather permitting, the little scattered fleet of boats is far out on the Bay of Naples; for the surface collecting, which furnishes a large share of the best material, can be done only at dawn, as the greater part of the creatures thus secured sink into the retirement of the depths during the day, coming to the surface to feed only at night. You are not likely to see the collecting party start out, therefore, but if you choose you may see them return about nine or ten o'clock by going to the dock not far from the laboratory. The boats come in singly at about this hour, their occupants standing up to row, and pus.h.i.+ng forward with the oars, after the awkward Neapolitan fas.h.i.+on. Many of the fishermen are quaint enough in appearance; some of them have grown old in the service of the laboratory. The morning's catch is contained in gla.s.s jars placed in baskets especially constructed for the purpose. The baskets have handles, but these are quite superfluous except to lift them from the boats, for in the transit to the laboratory the baskets are carried, as almost everything else is carried in Naples, on the head. To the novitiate it seems a striking risk to pile baskets of fragile gla.s.s and even more fragile specimens one above another, and attempt to balance the whole on the head, but nothing could be easier, or seemingly more secure, for these experts. Arrived at the laboratory, the jars are turned over to Signer Lo Bianco and his a.s.sistants, who sort the material, and send to each investigator in the workrooms whatever he may have asked for.

Of course surface-skimming is not the only method of securing material for the laboratory. The inst.i.tution owns a steam-launch named the _Johannes Muller_, in honor of the great physiologist, which operates a powerful dredge for securing all manner of specimens from the sea-bottom. Then ordinary lines and nets are more or less in requisition for capturing fish. And in addition to the regular corps of collectors, every fisherman of the neighborhood has long since learned to bring to the laboratory all rare specimens of any kind that he may chance to capture. So in one way and another the inst.i.tution makes sure of having in tribute all that the richly peopled waters of the Mediterranean can offer. And this well-regulated system of collecting, combined with the richness of the fauna and flora of the Bay of Naples, has no small share in the success of the marine laboratory. But these, of course, were factors that Dr. Dohrn took into account from the beginning.

Indeed, it was precisely with an eye to these important factors that Naples was selected as the site of the future laboratory in the days when the project was forming.

The Bay of Naples is most happily located for the needs of the zoologist. It is not too far south to exclude the fauna of the temperate zone, yet far enough south to furnish a habitat for many forms of life almost tropical in character. It has, in short, a most varied and abundant fauna. And, on the other hand, the large colony of Neapolitan fishermen made it certain that skilled collectors would always be at hand to make available the wealth of material. It requires no technical education to appreciate the value of this to the original investigator, particularly to the student of life problems. A skilful worker may do much with a single specimen, as, for example, Johannes Muller did half a century ago with the one available specimen of amphioxus, the lowest of vertebrates, then recently discovered. What Muller learned from that one specimen seems almost miraculous. But what if he had had a bucketful of the little boneless creatures at his disposal, as the worker at Naples now may have any day for the asking?

When it comes to problems of development, of heredity, a profusion of material is almost a necessity. But here the creatures of the sea respond to the call with amazing proficiency. Most of them are, of course, oviparous, and it is quite the rule for them to deposit their eggs by hundreds of thousands, by millions even. Everybody knows, since Darwin taught us, that the average number of offspring of any given species of animal or plant bears an inverse proportion to the liability of that species to juvenile fatalities. When, therefore, we find a fish or a lobster or other pelagic creature depositing innumerable eggs, we may feel perfectly sure that the vast majority of the eggs themselves, or the callow creatures that come out of them, will furnish food for their neighbors at an early day. It is an unkind world into which the resident of the deep is born. But his adversity is his human contemporary's gain, and the biologist will hardly be blamed, even by the most tender-hearted anti-vivisectionist, for availing himself freely of material which otherwise would probably serve no better purpose than to appease the appet.i.te of some rapacious fish.

Their abundance is not the only merit, however, of the eggs of pelagic creatures, in the eyes of the biologist. By equal good-fortune it chances that colorless things are at a premium in the sea, since to escape the eye of your enemy is a prime consideration. So the eggs in question are usually transparent, and thus, s.h.i.+elded from the vision of marine enemies, are beautifully adapted for the observation of the biologist. As a final merit, they are mostly of convenient size for manipulation under the microscope. For many reasons, then, the marine egg offers incomparable advantages to the student of cell life, an egg being the typical cell. And since nowadays the cell is the very focus of attention in the biological world, the importance of marine laboratories has been enhanced proportionately.

But of course not all the work can be done with eggs or with living specimens of any kind. It is equally important on occasion to examine the tissues of adult specimens, and for this, as a rule, the tissues must first be subjected to some preserving and hardening process preliminary to the cutting of sections for microscopical examination.

This is done simply enough in the case of some organisms, but there is a large cla.s.s of filmy, tenuous, fragile creatures in the sea population of which the jellyfish may be mentioned as familiar examples. Such creatures, when treated in an ordinary way, by dropping them into alcohol, shrivel up, coming to resemble nothing in particular, and ceasing to have any value for the study of normal structures. How to overcome this difficulty was one of the problems attacked from the beginning at the Naples laboratory. The chief part of the practical work of these experiments fell to the share of Signor Lo Bianco. The success that attended his efforts is remarkable. To-day you may see at the laboratory all manner of filmy, diaphanous creatures preserved in alcohol, retaining every jot of their natural contour, and thus offering unexampled opportunities for study _en ma.s.se_, or for being sectioned for the microscope. The methods by which this surprising result has been accomplished are naturally different for different creatures; Signor Lo Bianco has written a book telling how it all has been done. Perhaps the most important principle involved with a majority of the more tenuous forms is to stupefy the animal by gradually adding small quant.i.ties of a drug, such as chloral, to the water in which the creature is detained.

When by this means the animal has been rendered so insensible that it responds very sluggishly to stimuli, it is plunged into a toxic solution, usually formaline, which kills it so suddenly that its muscles in their benumbed state have not time to contract.

Any one who has ever tried to preserve a jellyfish, for example, by ordinary methods will recall the sorry result, and be prepared to appreciate Signor Lo Bianco's wonderfully beautiful specimens.