52 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



beauty of the forms he collected during the voyages round 

 the coasts of Britain in the yachts of his friends, Mr Smith 

 of Jordanhill and Mr M'Andrew, their graceful movements, 

 transparenc}', or it may be bright coloration, wonderful 

 budding, and still more their vivid phosphorescence, combine 

 to charm all interested in marine life ; indeed some of the 

 pages read like a romance. His gifts of delineation with 

 pencil and brush were nowhere more conspicuous than in the 

 plates of these glassy spheres, the symmetry and beauty of 

 which evoke the admiration of the onlooker. Whilst his 

 facile pen revelled in the description of their forms, their 

 wonderful reproduction, and their movements, his account of 

 their structure was in advance of his period. He classified 

 them according to the condition of the vessels (gastric canals) 

 and the position of the gonads. Though the whole subject 

 has been revolutionised by the linking of those beautiful 

 spheres to hydroid stocks as but stages in their life-histories, 

 yet in certain groups no hydroids are known. Be this as it 

 may, the pages and figures of the Naked-eyed Mediisce will 

 ever fascinate the British marine zoologist by their life-like 

 descriptions and delineations. Moreover, Forbes fully 

 comprehended the bearing of Steenstrup's Alternation of 

 Generations in the Hydroids, and generally supported his 

 views when others impugned them. Forbes, indeed, was 

 the pioneer in this pelagic group in our seas, for the earlier 

 work of Ellis and George Johnston of Berwick made us 

 acquainted only with the hydroid stocks, and it was not till 

 the Ray Society published Prof Allman's fine treatises, 

 and Dr Hincks still further emphasised the relationship of 

 hydroid colonies and the free-swimming (so-called) medusas, 

 his "floating flower-buds," that a fuller grasp of the subject 

 was obtained. His name, therefore, will ever be honourably 

 associated with these exquisite crystalline spheres which 

 throng the summer seas round our coasts, and occasionally 

 are beached on the smooth sand or on the dark olive fringe 

 of Fuci, in countless multitudes, just as they distend the fine 

 gauze surface- or the stronger midwater-nets to bursting. 

 Forbes early noticed their democratic relish for the higher 

 forms as food, and more recent work on young fishes has 



