{Authors are responsible for nomenclature used.)/\^ -(j-^ <^'- S 



^ LIBRARY: 



The Scottish Naturalist 



No. 39.] 1915 [March 



PROF. EDWARD FORBES AS A ZOOLOGIST. 



By Prof. M'iNTOSH, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S., etc., Gatty Marine 

 Laboratory, St Andrews. 



The modern nattiralist, in his marine and other laboratories 

 replete with every aid which science can render, and 

 surrounded by his more or less extensive libraries, has but 

 a faint notion of the ways of his predecessors even in the 

 comparatively recent days of Edward Forbes. Then micro- 

 scopes, dissecting lenses, as well as apparatus for capture in 

 the ocean were few and simple, and the investigator had, as 

 a rule, to depend on his own initiative and private resources 

 for marine zoological work. Moreover, he may well ponder 

 how a knowledge of the structure of the varied forms was 

 gained without the apparently indispensable aid of his 

 paraffin baths, microtomes, and the elaborate series of 

 reagents, stains, and clarifying materials. Even the men 

 of the intermediate stage, who laboriously and with success 

 cut thin sections of delicate marine organisms set in a carrot, 

 or, still better, set in a homeopathic cork soaked in absolute 

 alcohol, had their own doubts about the efficacy of simple 

 dissection of such forms with scalpel, forceps, and needle. 

 Yet the labours of Edward Forbes had a freshness, richness, 

 and breadth all their own, and his philosophic grasp of marine 

 problems made an era in the department — an era which his 

 popular and graphic pen, his genial and winning personality 

 39 G 



