EDWARD FORBES 23 



explorations in the interior of Lycia, in the course of which 

 they determined the sites of no fewer than eighteen ancient 

 cities previously unknown, and rescued many inscriptions 

 and carvings from the ruins. They copied upwards of 200 

 Greek and 30 Lycian inscriptions, and Forbes and Spratt a 

 few years later (1847) produced an interesting work in two 

 volumes entitled Travels in Lycia, giving the story of their 

 explorations. In addition to his share of the narrative and 

 the archaeology, the chapters on the Natural History of 

 Lycia and the neighbouring seas are clearly the work of 

 Forbes. Mr. Daniell fell a victim to the malignant malarial 

 fever of the country, and Forbes himself apparently had a 

 narrow escape. His companion, writing in 1842, says : 

 " Poor Forbes, the naturalist, was taken ill on the way from 

 Rhodes to Syra, of the country fever, and remained for 

 thirteen days together without tasting food, and without 

 medicine or medical advice." 



During this expedition, however, his main work was not 

 on land, but at sea ; and his marine dredgings in the Mges^n 

 gave great results. Captain Graves tells us how Forbes 

 converted every one on board — officers and men alike — into 

 ardent naturalists, bringing back shells and other offerings, 

 " curios," as they called them, from every surveying trip in 

 the boats. 



Of the Greeks, in one letter, he foretells — " they will 

 be a great people yet, and are almost as interesting as the 

 shellfish that live on their shores." One of the points of 

 interest, of course, in the shellfish was that they and many 

 of his other captures were precisely the animals collected 

 and described by Aristotle from these same coasts over two 

 thousand years before. He dredged successfully at a greater 

 depth (230 fathoms) than anyone had done before, and to his 

 surprise he brought up living starfishes and other animals 

 from 200 fathoms. He writes that the shellfish from the 

 deeper water all belong to types only known in the fossil 

 condition, and that, so far, he is the only zoologist who has 



