Septembeb 3, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



211 



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 accord- 

 ing to that veteran oceanographer Mr. J. Y. 

 Buchanan, the last surviving member of the 

 civilian staff of the Challenger, the science of 

 oceanography was bom at sea on February 15, 

 1873, when, at the first official dredging sta- 

 tion of the expedition, to the westward of 

 Teneriffe, at 1,525 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 pene- 

 trated 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 oceanog- 

 raphy. 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 ex- 

 pedition in 1769 with Sir Joseph Banks as 

 naturalist, and by subsequently circumnavi- 

 gating the South Sea about latitude 60° 

 finally disproved the existence of a great 

 southern continent; and Sir James Clerk 

 Boss, who, with Sir Joseph Hooker as nat- 

 uralist, first dredged the Antarctic in 1840. 



The use of the naturalist's dredge (intro- 

 duced by 0. F. Miiller, the Dane, in 1799) for 

 exploring the sea-bottom was brought into 

 prominence almost simultaneously in several 

 countries of northwest Europe — by Henri 

 Milne-Edwards in France in 1830, Michael 

 Sars in iN'orway in 1835, and our own Edward 

 Forbes in 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 his 

 friend the anatomist, John Goodsir, were 

 dredging 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 " Dredg- 

 ing 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 the sub- 

 sequent twenty-five years. 



It has happened over and over again in his- 

 tory that the British Association, by means of 

 one of its research committees, has led the way 

 in some imjKirtant 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 ex- 

 ploration of British seas which through marine 

 biological investigations and deep-sea expedi- 

 tions has led on to modem oceanography. 

 Edward Forbes and the British Association 

 Dredging Committee, Wyville Thomson, Car- 

 penter, Gwyn Jeffreys, Norman and other nat- 

 uralists of the yre-Challenger days — all these 

 men in the quarter-century from 1840 onwards 

 worked under research committees of the 

 British Association, bringing their results be- 

 fore 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 researchers 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 realize 

 that they were opening up a most comprehen- 

 sive and important department of knowledge. 

 But it is also true that in all his expeditions — 



