16 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



History and Antiquarian Society," proposed by the Maj-or of Bootle, responded 

 toby Mr. A. AV. Moore, president, and Mr. P. M. C. Kermode, lion, secretary; 

 "The Liverpool Marine-Biology Committee," proposed by the Lieutenant- 

 Governor, responded to by Professor Herdman, chairman, and Mr. Thompson, 

 hon. sec. ; " The Manx Fisheries." proposed by Mr. R. L. Ascroft, of the 

 Lancashire Sea-iisheries, responded to by Mr. R. Garside ; '"The Liverpool 

 Salvage Association and other Visitors," proposed by Mr. R. J. Harvey Gibson, 

 responded to by Captain Batchelor, and Professor Weiss. 



In proposing the health of the Lieutenant-Governor, Pi'ofessor Herdman 

 pointed out that they welcomed and honoured his Excellency, not only as the 

 representative of the Queen in the island, but also as a biologist, and alluded 

 to Mr. Spencer Walpole's former connection with Huxley and Buckland, as one 

 of H. M. Inspectors of Fisheries. He considered it a particularly happy con- 

 junction of circumstances, that they should have happened to establish that 

 marine biological station on a spot which had been rendered classic ground by 

 the labours of that pioneer of British Marine Biology, Professor Edward Forbes, 

 at a time when by rare good fortune the governor of the island is himself a 

 biologist, (applause). It was exactly sixty years since Forbes, then a student 

 at Edinburgh University, returned in summer to his home in the Isle of Man 

 to commence his work on British Marine Biology (applause). He hoped the 

 coincidence was a happy augury, and that as Edward Forbes had started mar- 

 ine investigation on this spot just 60 years ago, so that day Spencer Walpole 

 had opened an institution which would do much to advance the study of 

 marine biology in the Isle of Man. 



His Excellency said :— ]\Ir. Chairman, my lord, and gentlemen, I assure you, 

 sir, I thank you very heartily for the much too flattering terms in which you 

 have commended my name to this gathering, and I thank you all very heartily 

 for the kindly way in which you have received it. I believe that it is a func- 

 tion of the Governor of the Isle of Man to be, in some respects, a "Jack of all 

 trades," and I hope sometimes that it is not consequent upon that function 

 that he should be ' ' master of none. " (LaughterU You have rightly reminded 

 me that I have had in former days to deal with other subjects connected with 

 your own, and I still continue to take a deep interest in them ; but if I were 

 at all disposed to be puffed up by the kindnessof your greeting today, perhajis 

 I should find the best antidote to any feelings of pride in pondering over those 

 specimens which we have lately been examining in your laboratory, for, I 

 suppose that in the presence of biologists I may assume that they are the 

 nearest living representatives of our own immediate ancestors (laughter), and 

 I sometimes think that though we hear nowadays that we are living in the 

 best of all possible times, yet a good deal is to be said in favour of that simple 

 and primitive form of existence which those specimens remind us is still sur- 

 viving in the sea. (Hear, hear, and laughter). I am (juite sure in those days, 



