4 PKESIDENT S ADDRESS. 



founders and pioneers of our science, to outline a few of those investi- 

 gations and problems which have appeared to me to be of fundamental 

 importance, of economic value, or of general interest. 



Although the name Oceanography was only given to this branch of 

 science by Sir John Murray in 1880, and although according to that 

 veteran oceanographer Mr. J. Y. Buchanan, the last surviving member 

 of the civilian staff of the Challenger, the science of Oceanography 

 was born at sea on February 15, 1873,^ when, at the first official 

 dredging station of the expedition, to the westward of Teneriffe, at 

 1525 fathoms, everything that came up in the dredge was new and led to 

 fundamental discoveries as to the deposits forming on the floor of the 

 ocean, still it may be claimed that the foundations of the science were 

 laid by various explorers of the ocean at much earlier dates. Aristotle, 

 who took all knowledge for his province, was an early oceanographer on 

 the shores of Asia Minor. When Pytheas passed between the Pillars 

 of Hercules into the unknown Atlantic and penetrated to British seas in 

 the fourth century B.C., and brought back reports of Ultima Thule and 

 of a sea to the North thick and sluggish like a jelly-fish, he may have 

 been recording an early planktonic observation. But passing over all 

 such and many other early records of phenomena of the sea, we come 

 to surer ground in claiming, as founders of Oceanography, Count 

 Marsili, an early investigator of the Mediterranean, and that truly 

 scientific navigator Captain James Cook, who sailed to the South Pacific 

 on a Transit of Venus expedition in 1769 with Sir Joseph Banks as 

 naturalist, and by subsequently circumnavigating the South Sea about 

 latitude 60° finally disproved the existence ol a great southern 

 continent; and Sir James Clerk Eoss, who, with Sir Joseph Hooker as 

 naturalist, first dredged the Antarctic in 1840. 



The use of the naturalist's dredge (introduced by 0. F. Miiller, the 

 Dane, in 1799) for exploring the sea-bottom was brought into promin- 

 ence almost simultaneously in several countries of North-West Europe 

 — by Henri Milne-Edwards in France in 1830, Michael Sars in Norway 

 in 1835, and our own Edward Forbes about 1832. 



The last-mentioned genial and many-sided genius was a notable 

 figure in several sections of the British Association from about 1836 

 onwards, and may fairly be claimed as a pioneer of Oceanography. 

 In 1839 he and liis friend the anatomist, John Goodsir, were dredging 



' Others might put the date later. Significant publications are Sir John 

 Murray's Summary Volumes of the Challe.nger (189S), the inaugui-ation of 

 the ' Musee Oc^anographique ' at Monaco in 1910, the foundation of the 

 • Institut Oceanographique ' at Paris in 1906 (see the Prince of Monaco's 

 letter to the Minister of Public Instruction), and Sir John Murray's little book 

 The Ocean (1913), where the superiority of the term ' Oceanography ' to 

 ' ThS'lsssography ' (us^d by Alexander Agaesiz) is digcusged. 



