The Gatty Marine Laboratory, St. Andrews

Abstract

MARINE biologists will be pleased to learn that preparations are being made to reopen the Gatty Marine Laboratory at St. Andrews, and that it is hoped to have it in full working order when the British Association meets at Dundee this year. The laboratory, which has been closed for some twenty years, was built in 1896 and presented to the University by Dr. C. H. Gatty. It replaced the wooden building (previously a fever hospital) on an adjacent site where the late Prof. W. C. M'Intosh established in 1884 the first permanent marine laboratory in Great Britain. St. Andrews has been a classic ground for the marine naturalist ever since the time of Edward Forbes, nearly a century ago. It is true that with the decay of the local fishing industry and the increasing pollution of the inshore waters due to the growth of the city the facilities for collecting are not so good as they used to be; but the interest of the locality is by no means exhausted. It is to be hoped that Sir D'Arcy Thompson and Prof. R. J. D. Graham will be adequately supported in their efforts to make St. Andrews once again a centre of teaching and research in all that concerns the life of the sea.