16 FOUNDERS OF OCEANOGRAPHY 



examination on a certain afternoon, he at the appointed time 

 was non inventus. 



Of course, these young men ran a journal, and, of course, 

 they formed a select students' club, the Brotherhood of the 

 Magi, the symbol of which was a silver triangle on which was 

 engraved OINOS, EPQS, MA0HZIi:~wme, love, learning. 

 Their wine was not, I think, excessive ; the love was brotherly 

 love ; and the learning was certainly on a high level. They 

 were all clever, and most of them became celebrated men. 

 This " oineromathic " brotherhood they defined as " a Union 

 of the Searchers after Truth." 



I have dwelt at some length on his student years in 

 Edinburgh, as they were clearly the most stimulating and 

 formative time of his life, definitely related to all he did later 

 on, and brightened by friendships which persisted to the end. 

 It was a lengthy student's career — nine years — four years 

 of medical study, which he finally abandoned in 1836 to 

 devote all his energies to Science. But during this time he 

 spent considerable periods away from Edinburgh, travelling 

 for study and always adding to his natural history collec- 

 tions wherever he went. 



Several summers between 1832 and 1839 he spent in 

 dredging the Irish Sea, and exploring the fauna and flora of 

 the Isle of Man, and we see the results later on in his first- 

 pubHshed book, Malacologia Monensis, and in certain papers 

 in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History. 



Another summer (1833) he and a fellow-student explored 

 far from beaten tracks in Norway, going in a trading brig 

 from Ramsey to Arendal, and then shouldering their knap- 

 sacks and packs of scientific collecting apparatus, which, no 

 doubt, became heavier day by day as the collections grew. 

 He had, of course, the noticing eye and the acquisitive hand 

 of the true collector. On arriving at Bergen, his first action 

 was to note that a spitting-box or spitoon in the room he 

 entered was filled with a fine shell-sand, which he promptly 

 emptied into his handkerchief and took away with him for 



