NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC PROGRAM—1965 693 
barnacles, crabs and hydroids -- these latter are related to sea anemones. To 
do this he not only used a microscope, he also used a net of fine silk towed 
through the water to capture the minute immature or larval forms of these or- 
ganisms. Thus was born the plankton net, still the indispensable apparatus for 
capturing the minute life of the sea. Some professional scientists did not think 
too highly of this work -- he was not, as the saying goes, "a man of authority". 
The man of authority, who got credit for devising the plankton net, was 
Johannes Muller, the Professor at Berlin. It was Johannes Muller who set the 
pattern for trips to the seashore for the study of material, and who advocated 
the establishment of marine stations. It is often said that Johannes Miller 
was one of the last great universal naturalists, who tried to keep up with every- 
thing and it is suspected that he died in 1858 from what we would call an over- 
dose of sleeping pills. Be that as it may, Mllller should be remembered for one 
endearing gesture -- in his later years, distressed by his doctoral dissertation, 
he would steal copies back from library shelves and destroy them. 
Vaughan Thompson was a highly competent amateur, and Muller was a marine 
biologist because he was a universal naturalist. The first professional marine 
biologist, who worked with the creatures of the sea exclusively, was Edward Forbes, 
the Manx naturalist who lived from 1815 to 185). His posthumously published 
Natural History of the European Seas was the first book on marine biology as such. 
At the same time a contemporary of Forbes, Philip Henry Gosse (1801-1888) 
published some of the first popular books on seashore life -- thus starting that 
type of book that has done so much to attract people of all ages and interests to 
the sea shore. His books set a fashion in England (and there were similar books 
by Frenchman and Germans) that stimulated an amateur enthusiasm that has never 
waned. One must remember another economic factor -- just as the microscope made 
many studies of seashore life possible, so the building of railroads made it 
possible for people to reach the shore easily -- and whet mav be more significant, 
return in good time to their homes with their specimens. For a while it seemed 
that no well ordered Victorian parlour was complete without a marine aquarium, and 
young gentlemen accompanied their ladies to the seashore armed with a handbook to 
Seaweeds or zoophytes and spent the outing learning the names for their mutual 
edificatiou. There wasn't much else that could be done in those innocent days, 
evidently. 
Some idea of the lengths to which this passion for seashore studies could 
go can be had from on George Henry Lewes, best remembered by posterity as the 
principal man in George Eliot's life. Im a book titled "Seaside studies at 
Ilfracombe, Tenby and the Scilly Isles and Jersey} published in 1858, we find 
this passage: 
"The fact is, the sea is a passion. Its fascination, like all 
true fascination, makes us reckless of consequences. The sea is 
like a woman; she lures us and we run madly after hers; she ill 
uses us, and we adore her; heautiful, capricious, tender and 
terrible! There is no satiety in this love; there never is 
Satiety in true affection. The sea is the first thing which 
meets my eyes in the morning, placidly sunning herself under my 
window; her many voices beckoning me, her gently heaving breast 
alluring me, her face beaming with unutterable delight. All 
through the day I wanton with her; and the last thing at night, 
I see the long shimmering track of light from the distant beacon 
