1904.] The Progress of Marine Biology. 547 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, May 27, 1904. 



The Eight Hon. Lord Kelvin, G.C.V.O. D.C.L. LL.D. D.Sc. F.R.S., 

 Vice-President, in tlie Chair. 



H.S.H. Albert L, Prince of Monaco. 



The Progress of Marine Biology. 



For some few years past the advances made by oceanography have 

 been very marked, thanks to the rivalry which has grown up 

 between different peoples. The English, the Americans, the Germans, 

 the Belgians, the Scandinavians, and the Russians have made great 

 efforts in this direction, while France, Italy, Austria and Portugal 

 have not remained outside of the movement. Consequently this 

 science in its principal features is already pretty well known. 



But oceanography touches many departments of science, and 

 amongst them marine biology is for the moment the least advanced, 

 because it requires researches of a particularly difficult kind. It is 

 to it that I have more particularly devoted my attention, and it is of 

 it that I propose to speak this evening. 



From the reports of many important expeditions, you are already 

 well aware how universally distributed life is, even in the greatest 

 depths of the sea ; nevertheless, the means employed in this kind of 

 investigation have been, as a rule, too primitive to furnish very 

 complete results. In my own personal oceanographical work I 

 have, for long, employed new means and methods, which attract 

 different groups of marine animals, each according to its own 

 characteristic instincts, and I have been able in this way to add to 

 our knowledge of zoology. 



It is not, however, enough to collect. We must also endeavour 

 to penetrate the mystery of the laws which regulate life in the 

 medium of the sea, so different in almost all respects from that of 

 the air. For this the oceanographer requires the collaboration of 

 the biologist and the jDhysiologist. 



Not imfrequently unexpected circumstances open to the observer 

 new horizons, to be afterwards explored by science. It is thus that 

 finding myself among the islands of the Azores, to which my oceano- 

 graphical researches have frequently conducted mo, I assisted at the 

 capture of a cachalot, or sperm whale, by the whalers of the country ; 

 simple peasants, who launch their well appointed whale boats the 

 moment that the appearance of a fish is signalled by the look-out 

 man, who is continually stationed on a little hill in their neighbour- 



