Until the mid-nineteenth century, marine sciences developed in a discontinuousmanner because stable economic support for that expensive scientific venture wasoften impossible. It was the marine biological stations that flourished in Europeand the United States that eventually provided a home for marine scientists. In theUnited States, as well as in Europe, various marine biological stations were built onboth coasts that formed a “magnificent chain of biological stations.” The stationsthat constituted the great chain differed from one another in their characters. Forexample, the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, which was the largestof all American biological stations, tended to be geared more and more towardslaboratory biology. Biologists belonging to a more naturalist, field-science traditionoften favored a number of stations, mostly of modest scale, located here and therethroughout the coastal regions. This paper explores the early history of Americanmarine biological stations, and tries to reconsider the historiography of thebiological stations.