14 FOUNDERS OF OCEANOGRAPHY 



ciated. It is recorded that his grandmother Teare, seeing 

 him grubbing for snails in a hedge, said (in Manx) : " Ta mee 

 credjal naugh vod slane Elian Vannin sauail yn guilley shoh 

 veich cheet dy ve ommydan " (=1 believe the whole Isle of 

 Man cannot save this boy from being a fool). 



He was at school for a few years at Douglas, where he is 

 described as never having his pencil out of his hand, and as 

 covering his books and exercises and the margins of his Latin 

 verses with sketches of animals and caricatures and fancy 

 pictures of all kinds. Then he left home for good at the age 

 of seventeen. His mother had hoped he would enter the 

 Church ; his father wished him to be a doctor. As a com- 

 promise he went to London to study Art ! Although 

 exceedingly clever with his pencil, as the illustrations in 

 many of his books abundantly testify, four months in London 

 convinced him that he could never be a professional artist, 

 and he then decided to fall in with his father's wishes and 

 study medicine in Edinburgh. It is of interest to note that 

 at that time (1831) it took three days to travel from London 

 to the Isle of Man, and another three from there to Edinburgh. 



We hear most about two of the professors during his 

 earhest years at Edinburgh — Graham and Jameson. Graham 

 was Professor of Botany, and it is said to have been a matter 

 of dispute amongst his students whether it was seven or only 

 six diagrams that illustrated his course of lectures. The 

 microscope was unknown, and the only practical work 

 consisted in collecting flowers and pulhng them apart with 

 the fingers. Jameson, who united Geology and Zoology, was 

 a celebrated man, a noted mineralogist, and the founder of 

 the Natural History part of the well-known museum at 

 Edinburgh. 



It is evident that what Forbes appreciated most was the 

 collecting excursions into the country around Edinburgh, 

 and even farther afield to the Northern Highlands or to 

 the Western Islands, which some of the professors organized 

 from time to time. That was really the practical work in 



