10 FOUNDERS OF OCEANOGRAPHY 



correct views. He was the most original, brilliant, and 

 inspiring naturalist of his day, with a broad outlook over 

 nature and a capacity for investigating border-line problems 

 involving several branches of science ; he was, in a word, a 

 pioneer of oceanography. His work will be dealt with in 

 some detail in the following chapter. 



If Edward Forbes was the pioneer of shallow-water 

 dredging, Wyville Thomson played a similar part in regard 

 to the exploration of the depths of the ocean. His name 

 will go down through the ages as the leader of the famous 

 " Challenger " expedition, by far the most important scientific 

 deep-sea exploring expedition of all times. This and the 

 immediately preceding British expeditions in the " Light- 

 ning " and " Porcupine " demonstrated that there is no 

 azoic zone in the sea, but that numbers of animals are 

 found living down to the greatest depths of five or six miles 

 from the surface, and that some of these animals are related 

 to extinct forms, known as tertiary and cretaceous fossils. 

 These " Challenger " oceanographic results will be dealt with 

 more fully in a future chapter. 



The work of Sir John Murray brings us to the third or post- 

 " Challenger " period in nineteenth-century oceanography. 

 Murray's work during the great expedition was chiefly on 

 three subjects of primary importance — plankton, coral reefs, 

 and submarine deposits, which have all been most fruitful 

 of results both in his own hands and those of others since. 



After the return of the " Challenger," in 1876, Murray 

 took part in the two subsidiary expeditions of the " Knight- 

 Errant " and the " Triton " to explore the " warm " and the 

 " cold " areas of the Faroe Channel, which had been first 

 noticed by Wyville Thomson in the " Lightning " in 1868. 

 These cruises resulted in the discovery of the " Wyville- 

 Thomson Ridge," which separates the cold Arctic water 

 from the warmer Atlantic, and causes very different faunas 

 to exist in close proximity. Murray's oceanographic work 

 concluded with his joint exploration of the North Atlantic 



