8 PRESIDENT S ADDRESS, 



others. His plankton work has led on to those modern planktonic 

 researches which are closely bound up with the scientific investigation 

 of our sea-fisheries. 



His work on the deposits accumulating on the floor of the ocean 

 resulted, after years of study in the laboratory as well as in the field, 

 in collaboration with the Abbe Benard of the Biiissels Museum, after- 

 wards Professor at Ghent, in the production of the monumental ' Deep- 

 Sea Deposits ' volume, one of the Challe^iger Eeports, which first 

 revealed to the scientific world the detailed nature and distribution 

 of the varied submarine deposits of the globe and their relation to the 

 rocks forming the crust of the earth. 



These studies led, moreover, to one of the romances of science 

 which deeply influenced Murray's future life and work. In accumu- 

 lating material from all parts of the world and all deep-sea exploring 

 expeditions for comparison with the Challenger series, some ten 

 years later, Murray found that a sample of rock from Christmas Island 

 in the Indian Ocean, which had been sent to him by Commander (now 

 Admiral) Aldrich, of H.M.S. Egeria, was composed of a valuable 

 phosphatic material. This discovery in Mun-ay's hands gave rise to a 

 profitable commercial undertaking, and he was able to show that some 

 years ago the British Treasury had already received in royalties and 

 taxes from the island considerably more than the total cost of the 

 Challenger Expedition. 



That first British circumnavigating expedition on the Challenger 

 was followed by other national expeditions (the American Tuscarora 

 and Albatross, the French Travailleur, the German Gauss, 

 National, and Valdivia, the Italian Veitor Pisani, the Dutch 

 Siboga, the Danish Thor and others) and by almost equally cele- 

 brated and important work by unofiicial oceanogi'aphers such as 

 Alexander Agassiz, Sir John Murray with Dr. Hjort in the Michael 

 Sars, and the Prince of Monaco in his magnificent ocean-going yacht, 

 and by much other good work by many investigators in smaller and 

 humbler vessels. One of these supplementary expeditions I must refer 

 to briefly because of its connection with sea-fisheries. The Triton, 

 under Tizard and Mun-ay, in 1882, while exploring the cold and warm 

 areas of the Faroe Channel separated by the Wyville-Thomson ridge, 

 incidentally discovered the famous Dubh-Artach fishing-grounds, which 

 have been worked by British trawlers ever since. 



Notwithstanding all this activity during the last forty years since 

 Oceanography became a science, much has still to be investigated in 

 all seas in all branches of the subject. On pursuing any line of investi- 

 gation one very soon comes up against a wall of the unknown or a maze 

 of controversy. Peculiar difficulties surround the subject. The 



