JOHN MURRAY 79 



certainly hold good for coral reefs growing on a sinking area, 

 Murray's explanation, based upon observations and ascer- 

 tained facts, probably applies to many of the " atolls " and 

 " barrier reefs " of tropical seas. 



But I have been led on to these more recent times by his 

 paper of 1880. Let us now return to his work at the " Chal- 

 lenger " Office. During the last couple of years of Sir 

 Wyville Thomson's life, when he was more or less of an 

 invalid, Mr. John Murray (as he then was) came gradually to 

 take over more and more the complete charge of affairs at the 

 " Challenger " Office, including the distribution of the groups 

 of animals to specialists and the editing of the volumes of 

 reports. It was very fortunate for zoological science that 

 such a man was on the staff, ready to take up and carry out 

 to a successful issue the work that Sir Wyville Thomson was 

 no longer able to continue. Murray brought to the task a 

 complete knowledge of all that had to be done and how best 

 to do it, along with an extraordinary amount of zeal and 

 energy. During the years that followed, until the completion 

 of the work, he seemed to be doing several men's work. He 

 was in constant communication, both by correspondence and 

 personal visits, with the authors of reports in various parts 

 of Europe and America ; he had frequent dealings with the 

 Government departments concerned in the production of the 

 work ; and all the time he was also himself investigating some 

 of the great general problems of oceanography. It is diffi- 

 cult to imagine that any other man than John Murray could 

 have carried through all this mass of detailed and difficult 

 work and have produced the fifty thick quarto volumes within 

 twenty years of the return of the expedition. About five of 

 these large volumes are the result of Murray's own work. 

 Along with Staff-Commander T. H. Tizard, the late Professor 

 H. N. Moseley, and Mr. J. Y. Buchanan, he drew up the 

 general Narrative of the Expedition ; along with the late 

 Professor Renard he wrote the very important report upon 

 the Deep-sea Deposits (1891), generally recognized as the 



