| THE HARPSWELL LABORATORY |
By MAX MORSE
THE COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
Whether one is sailing about upon the sunny sea, fishing with muslin nets for the surface fauna, or steaming away far from shore to dredge for other material, or, again, carrying on observations in the cool sea water tanks and bell-jars of a neat little wooden workshop thrown open to the sea-breezes, it alike requires some effort to persuade one's self that the occupation is really something more than that of finding amusement.—Romanes, "Jellyfishes, Starfishes and Seaurchins."
ROMANES was thinking of Cromarty Firth when he drew this beautiful vignette. One may equally well think of the "little wooden workshop" founded by John Sterling Kingsley on Casco Bay.
As it stands at present, the laboratory is a one-story, wooden building, 24 by 43 feet on the ground, with sixteen windows looking out directly on a rugged shore, where the long ground swells from open water break incessantly. The building, within, is divided up into nine small rooms for investigators, and one large room, which is fitted up with five tables, for other workers, as occasion demands. A portion of this space is given over to shelving for the nucleus of a library made up mainly of books from the private library of Dr. Kingsley and reprints given to the laboratory by various students. Arrangement is made whereby the current journals are placed on file, during the season, and back numbers may be obtained for the asking, either from Tufts College or from the Boston Society of Natural History. At either end of the laboratory are double doors and when these are "thrown open to the sea breezes" an ideal temperature is assured, even on the warmest days. There have been but few days for many years when the thermometer in the laboratory registered above 78° F.
The equipment of the laboratory, modest as it is, has been found adequate for the purposes. Whenever special apparatus has been called for it has been supplied without delay, either from Portland, which is within an hour and one-half by the line of steamers running down the bay, or from Boston, which may be reached within three hours. Microtomes, glassware and the commoner laboratory materials are brought at the beginning of the season from the zoological laboratory of Tufts College. Investigators, even in our larger laboratories, prefer to take with them their more special apparatus, and such workers have been requested to do so when applying for space at the Harpswell station.
