SIR JOHN MURRAY 179 



area of some 400,000 square miles, chiefly in the 

 Atlantic. 



To return for a moment to the terrigenous 

 deposits, the particles that are washed down 

 from the land naturally occur mainly in the 

 neighbourhood of islands or continents, and con- 

 sist of the fragments of minerals forming the 

 continental rocks. These altogether cover an 

 area of something like 20,000,000 square miles. 

 The great bulk of this is washed down from the 

 earth, but the coral-mud which is formed by 

 definite marine organisms must be separated from 

 these, and also the volcanic mud which is vomited 

 up from the earth's crust, or from submarine 

 volcanoes, which are more common than the 

 " man in the street " thinks. 



The above very brief account of the floor of the 

 ocean gives some idea of the sort of problem Sir 

 John Murray devoted his life to solve. If it 

 were possible, one would now like to give some 

 sort of account of the man himself. He was 

 born in Canada, but no one who ever met him 

 would have mistaken him for anyone but a Scot, 

 and indeed his ancestry was Scottish. His later 

 school education was in Stirling, and he joined 



