EDWARD FORBES 21 



water, to which article Starfishes have a great antipathy. As 

 I expected, a Luidia came up in the dredge, a most gorgeous 

 specimen. As it does not generally break up before it is 

 raised above the surface of the sea, cautiously and anxiously 

 I sunk my bucket to a level with the dredge's mouth, and 

 proceeded in the most gentle manner to introduce Luidia to 

 the purer element. Whether the cold air was too much for 

 him, or the sight of the bucket too terrific, I know not, but in 

 a moment he proceeded to dissolve his corporation, and at 

 every mesh of the dredge his fragments were seen escaping. 

 In despair I grasped at the largest, and brought up the 

 extremity of an arm with its terminating eye, the spinous 

 eyelid of which opened and closed with something exceed- 

 ingly like a wink of derision " {British Starfishes, p. 138). 



In turning over these earlier works of Forbes, we think 

 of him as the typical " field-naturaUst " of the older days, 

 when it was still possible to take all nature for your province 

 and do useful work in many fields — constantly investigating, 

 constantly observing wherever he went, and throwing 

 welcome light on science by all his observations. 



All Forbes's later and more famous work in Marine Biology 

 and the relations between Zoology and Geology — work that 

 extended from Hebridean and Scandinavian seas, through 

 the Mediterranean to the far ^Egean — may be said to have 

 sprung from and been founded on his early work done as a 

 lad in the college vacations in his home Manx waters. 



A little to the north of Peel, on the west coast of Man, 

 lies a submarine elevation, the Ballaugh fishing bank, which 

 was the scene of some of Forbes's earliest explorations — ^more 

 than ninety years ago. The path of the pioneer is pro- 

 verbially rough, and no doubt it is easier for us now, when, 

 on occasions, we take our students to the BaUaugh bank for 

 a day's dredging from Port Erin. Forbes, in his day, must 

 have gone in a small sail-boat from the shore below his 

 house, or possibly in one of the " nobbies " of the Peel 

 fishing fleet, and was certainly more dependent upon wind 



