72 FOUNDERS OF OCEANOGRAPHY 



with the " Challenger." The scientific staff had already been 

 definitely appointed when, at the last moment, one of the 

 assistant naturalists dropped out, and, mainly on the strong 

 recommendation of Professor Tait, in whose laboratory 

 Murray was at the time working. Sir Wyville Thomson offered 

 him the vacant post — surely one of the best examples in the 

 history of science of the right man being chosen to fill a post. 

 In addition to taking his part in the general work of 

 the expedition, Murray devoted special attention to three 

 subjects of primary importance in the science of the sea, 

 viz., the plankton or floating life of the oceans, the deposits 

 forming on the sea bottoms, and the origin and mode of 

 formation of coral reefs and islands. It was characteristic of 

 his broad and synthetic outlook on nature that, in place of 

 working at the speciography and anatomy of some group of 

 organisms, however novel, interesting, and attractive to the 

 naturalist the deep-sea organisms might seem to be, he took 

 up wide-reaching general problems with economic and 

 geological as well as biological applications. Amongst the 

 preliminary reports sent home during the course of the 

 expedition, and published in the Proceedings of the Royal 

 Society (vol. xxiv. No. 170, p. 471), we find those by John 

 Murray, written from Valparaiso, December 9, 1875, dealing 

 with (1) Oceanic Deposits, (2) Surface Organisms and their 

 relation to Oceanic Deposits, and (3) Vertebrata (mainly 

 Fishes), which, though superseded by the later work of him- 

 self and others, are still of great historic interest. In that 

 preHminary account of the Oceanic Deposits we find Murray's 

 first classification into (1) Shore deposits, (2) Globigerina 

 ooze, (3) Radiolarian ooze, (4) Diatomaceous ooze, and (5) 

 Red and Grey Clays, which has been adopted with little or 

 no change in all succeeding works ; and, in his report on the 

 surface organisms, we find the first figures of the living 

 Hastigerina, Pyrocystis, and the remarkable deep-water 

 Radiolaria known as '' Challengerida." 



Each of the three main lines of investigation — deposits, 



