198 NATURAL HISTORY. 



results. Forbes may be said, in fact, to have been 

 one of the first British naturalists to recognise the 

 enormous value of the dredge as an instrument of 

 zoological research ; and, from this time on, we find him 

 engaged in dredging whenever he got an opportunity. 

 The results of his dredging expeditions round our coasts 

 were given to the world in various memoirs, the first of 

 which was published in the 'Annals and Magazine of 

 Natural History' as early as 1835, when he was still 

 an Edinburgh student. 



In 1836, Forbes, having finally renounced medicine, 

 proceeded to Paris, where he stayed till the following 

 year, studying natural history under Geoffroy St Hilaire 

 and De Blainville, and working in the great museums 

 of the French capital. At the close of the Paris session 

 he paid a visit to the south of France, and from there 

 he made his way to Algeria, where he collected a 

 number of Molluscs, which he subsequently described 

 in the 'Annals of Natural History.' The winter of 

 1 83 7-38 Forbes again spent in Edinburgh, nominally 

 as a literary student, but in reality he worked at nothing 

 but science. It was at this time that he published his 

 first book, a little treatise entitled ' Malacologia Monensis,' 

 dealing with the Mollusca of the Isle of Man. The 

 summer of 1838 was spent once more on the Continent, 

 and the winter of the same year found him back again 

 in Edinburgh always hard at work writing papers and 

 scientific memoirs, giving lectures on natural history, 

 collecting, and the like. The summer of 1839 was 

 spent mostly in dredging round the coasts of Scotland, 

 and in collecting materials for a report on the air-breathing 



