54 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



area, only two places, viz., one off the Mull of Galloway and the 

 other in the Sound of Sleat, being considerably beyond lOO 

 fathoms. Moreover, his palaeontological work furnished him 

 with data whereby to link on many of the modern molluscs 

 to their fossil and sub-fossil representatives. 



The whole work reflects the highest credit on the talented 

 authors— of whom Forbes was the life and soul of everything 

 pertaining to the habits and the distribution in time and 

 space of the elegant forms so graphically dealt with. Were 

 it only for that work, the boundaries of zoology were 

 broadened and its area enriched by their united labours ; 

 especially by him who had so early taken the molluscs of 

 his native shores of the Isle of Man under his care. 



A naturalist born, the instinct within him soon asserted 

 itself, and from early years his collections of animal- and 

 plant-life, of rocks and minerals, demonstrated the current 

 of his thoughts and his thirst for a knowledge of Nature. 

 Constant rambles, first on the shores of the Isle of Man, 

 botanical excursions over its surface, as well as the diligent 

 use of the dredge in its surrounding waters, laid the basis for 

 those wider researches in the British seas from Shetland to 

 the Channel Islands, and from the western to the eastern 

 Mediterranean, on which his subsequent, and alas, his last! 

 treatise on "The Natural History of the European Seas"^ 

 rested. His labours on the distribution of marine animals, 

 moreover, have the greater interest that they were entirely 

 pre-Darwinian, and that his studies had made him a 

 palaeontologist as well as a zoologist (or zoo-geologist). Thus 

 his views centred round zoological provinces, each of which 

 was supposed to be a centre of creation— a centre in which 

 an assemblage of typical species is represented, and nowhere 

 else. " Similar species, to which the name representative is 

 mutually applied, appear in areas distant from each other, 

 but under the influence of similar physical conditions. But 

 every true species presents in its individuals certain features, 

 specific characters, which distinguish it from every other 

 species ; as if the Creator had set an exclusive mark or seal 



1 "The Natural History of the European Seas," Ed, Forbes and R, 

 G. Austen, 1859. 



