56 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



the material was acquired from personal observation. The 

 cruises of the LigJitiiing and Porcupine, and still more of 

 the Challenger, and other expeditions, without doubt have 

 carried animal life to a depth far greater than could have 

 been anticipated in the days of Forbes, yet no zoologist had or 

 even now has a more thorough acquaintance with the marine 

 life to be found in his four zones, since from boyhood he 

 had searched and studied the subject with rare enthusiasm. 

 Notwithstanding that centrifuges, water-bottles, photometers, 

 current meters, hydrometers, densimeters, closing nets, and 

 Six's thermometers were unknown in his day, yet it may be 

 doubted if any or all of these go far to the making of a 

 sound marine zoologist like Edward Forbes. 



With his minor memoirs and papers in zoology, as well 

 as with the numerous interesting zoological remarks in the 

 Travels in Lycia (vol. ii.), it is impossible to deal on the 

 present occasion, since between the years 1834 and 1855 a 

 constant succession issued from his pen, chiefly on the 

 Coelenterates, Echinoderms, and Mollusca ; though Asci- 

 dians and Gephyreans, Ainphioxus, the Dodo, Directions 

 for Dredging, and the Irish Fisheries also figure in the 

 list. Moreover, Forbes was a classical scholar as well 

 as a zoologist, and his appreciation of Aristotle's wonderful 

 knowledge of marine forms is one of the most notable 

 features in the work alluded to {Travels in Lycia). The 

 remarkable facility of his pen was only equalled by the 

 beauty and accuracy of his pencil. In his brief and busy 

 life he compressed the literary and scientific labours of 

 one double his age ; though perhaps the strain on the 

 purely literary side and his social popularity told too 

 severely on his frame. Yet without these the influence of 

 the talented naturalist would have been less, and the halo 

 which even now surrounds his name would have been shorn 

 of some of its brightness. 



Elected at a time when the Chair of Natural History in 

 Edinburgh had long been held by a distinguished miner- 

 alogist, and when marine zoology had been largely in 

 abeyance, the advent of the charming exponent of living 

 marine things — in the centre of an active band of talented 



