PROF. EDWARD FORBES AS A ZOOLOGIST 57 



colleagues and friends like John Goodsir, James Simpson, 

 James Syme, Robert Christison, J. H. Bennett, John H. 

 Balfour, and George Wilson — could not but raise the liveliest 

 hopes. But his years of struggle to gain a position, and to 

 publish his labours in various fields, his incessant literary 

 work in reviews and notices, and his innumerable anxieties, 

 had sapped his constitution, and, ere he had well settled in 

 the Chair that has been the goal of many a naturalist, and 

 the fame of which he would have extended in a manner all 

 his own, he died before reaching his fortieth year. His 

 brilliant example, his gentle and genial bearing, personal 

 charm, and his substantial advances in zoology have had an 

 influence which to long years of patient work have not 

 seldom been denied. Even in 1857 to see his last occupation 

 in a table-case, in the old University Museum of Edinburgh, 

 in which he had been arranging the rocks of the neighbour- 

 hood, as well as to ponder over his specimens of the British 

 marine fauna in the narrow room above — for he rightly held 

 that the Museum and his class were inseparables — was to 

 feel the spell of that vanished hand which had illumined the 

 pages of British Marine Zoology, enlisted the sympathy and 

 help of all with whom he came in contact, and had led the 

 way to further advances. 



It needs no fanciful pen to sketch the transformation 

 that busy brain and skilful hand would have made in the 

 Museum alone, for his whole heart was in his work. His 

 veteran predecessor, though mainly distinguished as a 

 mineralogist, had by no means neglected the collection, 

 which included many large mammals well-stuffed and 

 mounted, such as the orang and many monkeys, insectivores, 

 bats, a fine walrus and seals, tigers old and young, lion and 

 lioness, hyaenas, bears (Polar and Malayan), lynx, polecat, 

 and weasels ; beavers, capybara, and other rodents ; hyrax 

 and skulls of elephants. The Perissodactyls were represented 

 by the South American and Indian tapirs, the Indian 

 rhinoceros, horses, the kiang and zebra ; the non-ruminants 

 by wild boars and peccaries, whilst the ruminants included 

 many African antelopes, such as the oryx, reed-buck, water- 

 buck, and koodoo ; chamois, thar. Rocky Mountain sheep, 

 39 H 



