EDWARD FORBES 33 



various scientific callings, who could ride a race, hunt a fox, 

 shoot a snipe, cast a fly, pull an oar, sing a song, or mix a 

 bowl, against any man with unexercised brains, or even with 

 none at all, in the United Kingdom." Mixing of bowls has 

 gone out of fashion in scientific circles, but with that excep- 

 tion, and with such additions as may have resulted from the 

 developments of sport and locomotion, the boast might be 

 repeated of the " philosophers " of the present generation. 



Forbes was certainly the most brilliant and inspiring 

 naturalist of his day — a day when it was still possible to 

 make original contributions to knowledge in several depart- 

 ments of nature. As we have seen, he held posts successively 

 as Professor of Botany in London, as False ontologist to the 

 Geological Survey, and as Professor of Natural History in 

 Edinburgh ; but to my mind the best description in brief 

 form is that he was the pioneer of oceanography — the science 

 of the sea. 



It is true that the term oceanography was not coined 

 till much later, and that Forbes in his marine explorations 

 probably did not realize that he was opening up a most com- 

 prehensive and important department of knowledge. But 

 it is also true that in all his expeditions — in the British seas 

 from the Channel Islands to the Shetlands, in Norway, in 

 the Mediterranean as far as the JEgesm Sea —his broad out- 

 look on the problems of nature was that of the modern 

 oceanographer, and he was the spiritual ancestor of men like 

 Sir Wyville Thomson, of the " Challenger " expedition, and 

 Sir John Murray, who carried on the work, through more 

 recent post-" Challenger " times^ almost to our own day. 



Forbes in his marine investigations, as we have seen, 

 worked at border-line problems, dealing, for example, with 

 the relations of geology to zoology, and the effect of the 

 past history of the land and sea upon the distribution of 

 plants and animals at the present day, and in these respects 

 he was an early oceanographer. For the essence of that new 

 subject is that it also investigates border-line problems and 



