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Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/132

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128
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

of this station in the region where so much work of value had already been accomplished. It was not possible to have a good marine station nearer Stockholm on the east coast because the waters of the Baltic in former times was a vast lake and now receiving the outflow of many rivers, has a comparatively small percentage of salt, and consequently its fauna is poor in marine species. The physician A. Regnell gave the necessary funds to primarily establish the Kristineberg station.

In 1892 Lovén's friend and biographer, Professor Hjalmar Théel, succeeded the founder as director and to him is due the reorganization and enlargement of the station now not only open during the summer for university students and public school teachers, but also all the year

A Winter View of the Kristineberg Zoological Station.

for the investigating naturalists. Many animals which in the summer live in the depths in winter come up into the littoral belt, where their life-history can be studied to the best advantage. Almost nothing is known of the fate of the littoral fauna of the shallow bays when in winter the sand and slime in which these animals live is often frozen solid. Professor Théel's experiment demonstrated that a frozen mass of barnacles will not only resist -18° Centigrade, but revive after the ice melts and leave many young. For the solution of such physiological problems it is necessary to have the station available in winter as well as in summer. This was made possible in 1901 by a gift of 40,000 crowns from Konsul Broms, Mæcenas of the Swedish expedition to Spitzenbergen and eastern Greenland. The funds were used to the