Biographical Notice of Edward Forbes. ‘377 
In 1835, Edward Forbes visited the Alps; in 1837 he was pros- 
ecuting his studies at Paris under Beudant, oo Geoffroy St. 
Hilaire, and De Blainville, and in May of the e year we hear 
of him at Algiers; the result of this emia w as an account of 
the land and freshwater mollusca of Algiers and Bougia, published 
in the ‘ Annals of Natural History’ for May, 1839. 
With the same view of prosecuting his researches in natural 
history, he visited Styria and Carniola in 1838, his remarks on 
which were published in the ‘ Proceedings of the Botanical Soci- 
ety.’ In the summers of 1839 and 1840 he delivered at Edin- 
burgh, whilst still a student, a course of scientific lectures on zool- 
ogy, as well as one of a more popular nature, in which he pointed 
out the bearings of zoology on geology. I mention this as a sub- 
ject of peculiar interest to us, as indicating the commencement 
of those views which, by their subsequent development and their 
growing importance in the hands of Edward Forbes, have exer- 
cised such a beneficial and practical influence on the study o 
geolo 
The time was now fast approaching when Edward Forbes was 
to find a wider sphere for the exercise of his brilliant genius. In 
1841 he published his ‘History of British Star Fishes and other 
Echinoderms,’ a delightful volume, charmingly illustrated by his 
own pencil and from his own designs. here are many in this 
oom who will recognize in these illustrations the same ingenious 
and playful fancy, and the same ready pencil which never allowed 
a sheet of paper to lie unused before him, while he had a i 
of transferring to it the humorous and graceful forms which 
realized without an effort, and almost without a thought. In this 
islands: an appointment more suited to his tastes and to his talents 
could not have been devised. He had here full play spe the prose- 
cution of his favorite pursuits of botany, zoology, and geology. 
Already well acquainted with the flora and fauna of the European 
Continent and their geographical distribution, he had now an op- 
portunity of tracing their further extension to the East, and of 
examining the first. appearance of the Oriental facies which they 
put on in the eastern portions of the Mediterranean. Nor was 
Edward Forbes the man to neglect such an opportunity. During 
this and the following year he ‘pursued his botanical and zoologi- 
cal researches with unwearied energy, assisted by Captain Graves, 
who omitted no opportunity of enabling his scientific friend and 
companion to avail himself of every occasion for observation 
which the service afforded. It was during his various excursions 
in the Beacon and her boats, that Edward Forbes followed out 
those researches with the dredge, amongst the islands of the 
Seconp Series, Vol. XX, No. 60,—Nov., 1855. 
