1855.] Linneun Society, 409 



the late Mr. Sasse. By the persuasion of his friends, however, after 

 six months' training, he gave up the idea of becoming an artist by 

 profession ; and in the autumn of the same year he entered the Uni- 

 versity of Edinburgh as a medical student. For three years he 

 attended the usual routine of classes, but never succeeded in con- 

 quering his dislike to medicine as a profession, and greatly preferred 

 the lectures and excursions of the Natural-History Professors, Gra- 

 ham and Jameson, with both of whom he soon became a favourite 

 pupil. His dislike to the medical profession increasing, he declined the 

 examination for a degree, and quitted Edinburgh for a time to make a 

 tour in the South of France, which he extended to Algiers, passing 

 the winter of 1836-37 in Paris, where he attended the lectures of the 

 Professors of the Jardin des Plantes and of the Sorbonne. He had 

 previously, in 1833, visited Norway, and published "Notes" of his 

 Tour in the ' Magazine of Natural History.' The winter of 1837-38 

 was spent in Edinburgh, and the summers of 1838 and 1839 were 

 chiefly devoted to the extension of his knowledge of Marine Zoology 

 by dredging excursions in company with his friend Mr. Goodsir, not 

 confined to the eastern coast of Scotland, but extended to the Orkney 

 and Shetland Islands, and to the Hebrides. In 1838 he also pub- 

 lished his first separate work, ' Malacologia Monensis, or Catalogue 

 of the MoUusca inhabiting the Isle of Man and the neighbouring 

 Sea;' which was followed, in 1840-41, by his 'History of British 

 Starfishes,' forming part of Mr. Van Voorst's series of works on 

 British Natural History. In the spring of 1841, at the invitation of 

 Captain Graves, he joined, as Naturalist, H.M.S. Beacon, which was 

 then engaged in a Survey of the Islands of the Greek Archipelago, 

 and was afterwards commissioned to bring home the remains of 

 Lycian Antiquities discovered by Sir Charles Fellowes. During an 

 absence of nearly two years in the Levant, he made excellent use of 

 the opportunities afibrded him for carrying out his dredging opera- 

 tions, and adding to the large stock of information which he already 

 possessed in relation to the theory of distribution in depth of marine 

 life, on which some of his most remarkable speculations were after- 

 wards founded. He also made two excursions into Lycia, the first 

 in company with Mr. Hoskyn, and the second with Mr. Daniel and 

 Lieut. Spratt, both fruitful in antiquarian ' discovery , an account 

 of which was subsequently published by him in conjunction with 

 Lieut. Spratt, under the title of 'Travels in Lycia,' 8vo, 1847. In 

 the course of this latter tour Mr. Daniel died of a malignant fever, 

 and Forbes himself had nearly fallen a victim to the same disease, 

 from the consequences of which he seems never to have perfectly 



