•^"L 



president's address. ,6 



in the Shetland seas, with results which Forbes made known to the 

 meeting of the British Association at Birmingham that summer, with 

 such good effect that a ' Dredging Committee ' ■* of the Association was 

 formed to continue the good work. Valuable reports on the discoveries 

 of that Committee appear in our volumes at intervals during tlie subse- 

 quent twenty-five years. 



It has happened over and over again in history that the British 

 Association, by means of one of its research committees, has led the 

 way in some important new research or development of science and has 

 shown the Government or an industry what wants doing and how it 

 can be done. We may fairly claim that the British Association has 

 inspired and fostered that exploration of British seas which through 

 marine biological investigations and deep-sea expeditions has led on to 

 modern Oceanography. Edward Forbes and the British Association 

 Dredging Committee, Wyville Thomson, Carpenter, Gwyn Jeffreys, 

 Norman, and other naturalists of the pre-Challeiiger days — all these men 

 in the quarter-century from 1840 onwards worked under research com- 

 mittees of the British Association, bringing their results before successive 

 meetings ; and some of our older volumes enshrine classic reports on 

 dredging by Forbes, McAndrew, Norman, Brady, Alder, and other 

 notable naturalists of that day. These local researches paved the way 

 for the Challenger and other national deep-sea expeditions. Here, 

 as in other cases, it required private enterprise to precede and stimulate 

 Government action. 



It is probable that Forbes and his fellow-workers on this ' Dredging 

 Committee ' in their marine explorations did not fully realise that they 

 were opening up a most comprehensive and important department of 

 knowledge. But it is also true that in all his expeditions — in the British 

 seas from the Channel Islands to the Shetlands, in Norway, in the 

 Mediterranean as far as the ^gean Sea — ^his broad outlook on the 

 problems of nature was that of the modern oceanographer, and he was 

 the spiritual ancestor of men like Sir Wyville Thomson of the 

 Challenger Expedition and Sir John Murray, whose accidental death 

 a few years ago, while still in the midst of active work, was a grievous 

 loss to this new and rapidly advancing science of the sea. 



Forbes in these marine investigations worked at border-line 

 problems, dealing for example with the relations of Geology to Zoology. 



■* ' For researches with the dredge, with a view to the investigation of 

 the marine zoology of Great Britain, the illustration of the geographical distri- 

 bution of marine animals, and the more accurate determination of the 

 fossils of the pleistocene period : under the superintendence of Mr. Gray, Mr. 

 Forbes, Mr. Goodsir, Mr. Patterson, Mr. Thompson of Belfast, Mr. Ball of 

 Dublin, Dr. George Johnston, Mr. Smith of Jordan Hill, and Mr. A. Striclcland, 

 £60.' Eeport for 1839, p. xxvi. 



