Nos. 119 AND 120. | 1921 [ Nov.-Dec. 
WILLIAM SPIERS BRUCE, LL.D. 
1867-1921. 
“DEEP and dangerous seas, amidst precipices and head- 
lands ... amid perilous straits and currents and eddies, 
long sunken reefs of rock, over which the vivid ocean foams 
and boils, dark caverns, to whose extremities man nor 
skiff has ever ventured, lonely and often uninhabited isles.” 
These words, found on a scrap of note-paper in his desk, 
just as they had been copied by Dr Bruce from Scott’s 
Pirate, surely give a clue to his thoughts. He was an 
accomplished meteorologist, oceanographer, and naturalist, 
but above all he was a great adventurer, looking forward 
to dangers to be encountered and overcome, planning great 
enterprises and dreaming of great achievements. How 
else can one explain that constant siege of the Polar 
regions, Arctic and Antarctic, in which he spent the best 
part of his life, or the overmastering will with which he 
tackled and overcame almost insurmountable difficulties 
in creating the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition? 
So he dreamed of Edinburgh as a world centre of the 
science of oceanography, and created there a Scottish 
Oceanographical Laboratory, the foundation of a visionary 
institute which was to crown the labours of that great 
succession of Edinburgh oceanographers of which he was 
the last—Edward Forbes, Wyville Thomson, John Murray, 
and Bruce. 
IT19Q AND 120 xX 
