SIR JOHN MURRAY 171 



appealed more nearly to him. He was an adept 

 at constructing machines and instruments which 

 would plumb the secrets of the deep, and as 

 soon as the results of his researches on the bottom 

 of the sea had appeared he was recognised at 

 once, and as long as he lived, as the authority on 

 the floor of the ocean. This is no time or place 

 to attempt to sum up Sir John Murray's con- 

 tributions to our common knowledge. His theory 

 of coral-reefs is probably right in certain areas 

 and so is the theory of Darwin. His merit here 

 lies in that he shewed that Darwin's view is 

 not universally applicable. The romance of 

 Christmas Island must also be told elsewhere. 



Sir John was no specialist. He had ever the 

 widest point of view of the chemistry, the physics, 

 the geology, and the biology of the ocean, and 

 to him these varying sciences always had their 

 full value in the problem which he had made 

 his own. He was constantly devising new sound- 

 ing apparatus for bringing up samples of the sea 

 bottom, thermometers for testing the bottom 

 temperatures, instruments for registering the 

 pressure at great depths, and other implements 

 which have made our knowledge of the depths 

 of the sea accurate and even minute. 



