Excerpt from The Fresh-Water Biological Stations of America

This supremacy of interest in marine biology is not, however, confined to the seaside laboratory; it finds its way into text books and schoolrooms. Laboratory guides in which marine types very largely predominate are not unknown, and too many a teacher of biology in collegiate courses and in the secondary schools of our inland towns depends upon marine forms for laboratory study and demonstration, to the sad neglect of the fauna with which both he and his pupils come in daily contact. From a pedagogical point of view this element of remoteness in the objects of study is unfortunate, for it tends to abridge the sympathetic contact with nature and the development on the part of the pupil of a lively interest in the world of life about him, a feature of large cultural value in all biological education.

The writer has found a widespread feeling in biological circles that the fresh-water environment affords far less of value for investigation and instruction than the marine. Considered merely volumetrically, the marine fauna may well have the advantage, but all the general problems of biology can be approached with ease, and at times to even greater advantage at the fresh-water station; and, furthermore, in variety and rich ness the fauna of fresh water, in some localities at least, com pares very favorably with that at the seaside. It may then be that one of the functions of the fresh-water station is to preserve and foster an interest in fresh-water life and to empha size its availability and utility for purposes of instruction. In no sense of the word, however, are the marine and fresh-water stations to be regarded as rivals; each is the necessary comple ment of the other, and both alike have their place in the field of biology.

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