

EDWARD FORBES. 205 



Forbes was the author of a number of very valuable 

 memoirs, descriptive of species, or dealing with the distri- 

 bution of these animals, and treating not only of the 

 marine types, but also of the land-shells and the fresh- 

 water forms. In this branch, however, his great work was 

 his ' History of British Mollusca,' written conjointly with 

 Mr Hanley. This standard work was in four large 

 volumes, the first of which appeared in 1848. 



Much of Forbes's work as regards the Echinoderms and 

 the Molluscs was of a palaeontological character, and dealt 

 with fossil species. Apart from this, he did some excellent 

 work in what is called ' stratigraphical ' palaeontology, or in 

 other words in palaeontology as applied to geology. His 

 two best-known memoirs in this connection are one ' On 

 the Succession of Life in the Dorsetshire Purbecks,' and 

 one 'On the Fluvio-marine Tertiaries of the Isle of Wight' 

 The first of these was published as one of the ' Reports ' of 

 the British Association in 1850; and the second appeared 

 in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society in 



1853- 



Admirable as was Forbes's work in the various branches 

 of natural history above enumerated, he is perhaps best 

 known by his researches into the complicated problems 

 connected with the 'distribution' of animals, both in the 

 sea and upon the land. Before dealing briefly with these 

 researches, it may, however, be well to glance for a moment 

 at the views which he held with regard to the nature of 

 * species.' Now, Forbes, like almost all naturalists at 

 that time, was a firm believer in the fixity of species. 

 Lamarck's views as to the mutability of animal species had 

 at this period obtained no acceptance in the scientific 



