THE "challenger" EXPEDITION. ix 



"Challenger" started on her cruise in December 1872, not 

 to return till May 1876. 



Of the incidents of the voyage little need be said here ; 

 they are recorded with inimitable freshness and vigour in the 

 following pages. But Moseley's share in the scientific work, 

 and his life among his comrades, scientific and naval, deserve 

 mention as showing the catholicity of interest in nature which 

 characterised him, as well as his good humour, good fellowship, 

 and savoirfaire. 



Ostensibly the " Challenger " expedition was fitted out for 

 the exploration of the greatest depths of the ocean, and in 

 fact the programme was closely adhered to ; but to Moseley, 

 who never missed anything, the chief interest lay, not in the 

 contents of the deep sea dredge, which, he tells us, soon grew 

 wearisome in their monotonous sameness, but in the countries 

 visited, where there were innumerable objects on land or on 

 the littoral, neglected because supposed to be accessible or 

 familiar. Nothing came amiss to him ; if an object had been 

 described before, he wished to verify the description, and often 

 he added something to it. Then there were numbers of forms 

 requiring closer study — these must be hunted up ; there were 

 islands rarely visited by man of which the fauna and flora 

 were practically unknown ; there were savage and barbarous 

 races of man, whose primitive customs and implements, fast 

 vanishing before the approach of western civilisation, must be 

 recorded and collected. One of his shipmates * tells me that 

 whenever they arrived at a new place IMoseley would ask his 

 colleagues what they intended to work at, so that he might 

 undertake what they did not care for. His anxiety was that 

 the whole ground should be covered, and he was willing to 

 leave all the more apparently interesting work to others, 

 reserving for himself what they rejected. It came about that 

 he did more work than anybody else on the expedition, though 

 his friend, von Willemoes Suhm, might have run him close 

 had he survived. No one doubts now that Moseley's view of 



* Captain Tizard, R.N., to whom I am indebted for much information 

 relative to Moseley's life on the " Challenger," and for assistance during 

 the passage of this book thi-ough the press. 



