3, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



213 



Eoyal Society in promoting " a Circumnavi- 

 gation Expedition, specially fitted out to carry 

 the Physical and Biological Exploration of the 

 Deep Sea into all the Great Oceanic Areas " ; 

 and our council subsequently appointed a com- 

 mittee consisting of Dr. Carpenter, Professor 

 Huxley and others to cooperate with the Eoyal 

 Society in carrying out these objects. 



It has been said that the Challenger Expe- 

 dition will rank in history with the voyages of 

 Vasco da Gama, Columbus, Magellan and 

 Cook. Like these it added new regions of the 

 globe to our knowledge, and the wide expanses 

 thus opened up for the first time, the floors of 

 the oceans, though less accessible, are vaster 

 than the discoveries of any previous explora- 

 tion. 



Sir Wyville Thomson, although leiader of 

 the expedition, did not live to see the com- 

 pleted results, and Sir John Murray will be 

 remembered in the history of science as the 

 Challenger naturalist who brought to a suc- 

 cessful issue the investigation of the enor- 

 m.ou3 collections and the publication of the 

 scientific results of that memorable voyage: 

 these two Scots share the honor of having 

 guided the destinies of what is still the great- 

 est oceanographic exploration of all times. 



In addition to taking his part in the general 

 work of the expedition, Murray devoted special 

 attention to three subjects of primary impor- 

 tance in the science of the sea, viz. : (1) the 

 plankton or floating life of the oceans, (2) the 

 deposits forming on the sea bottoms, and (3) 

 the origin and mode of formation of coral 

 reefs and islands. It was characteristic of his 

 broad and synthetic outlook on nature that, 

 in place of working at the speciography and 

 anatomy of some group of organisms, how- 

 ever novel, interesting and attractive to the 

 naturalist the deep-sea organisms might seem 

 to be, he took up wide-reaching general prob- 

 lems with economic and geological as well as 

 biological applications. 



Each of the three main lines of investiga- 

 tion — ^deposits, plankton and coral reefs — 

 which Murray undertook on board the Chal- 

 lenger has been most fruitful of results both in 

 his own hands and those of others. His plank- 



ton work has led on to those modern plank- 

 tonic 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 Eenard of the 

 Brussels Museum, afterwards professor ' at 

 Ghent, in the production of the monumental 

 " Deep-Sea Deposits " volume, one of the 

 Challenger Reports, which first revealed to the 

 scientific world the detailed nature and distri- 

 bution 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 compari- 

 son 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 Ad- 

 miral) Aldrich, of H.M.S. Egeria, was com- 

 posed of a valuable phosphatic material. This 

 discovery in Murray'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 expedi- 

 tion on the Challenger was followed by other 

 national expeditions (the American Tuscarora 

 and Albatross, the French Travailleur, the Ger- 

 man Oaitss, NaiioTMl and Yaldivia, the Italian 

 Yettor Pisani, the Dutch Sihoga, the Danish 

 Thor, and others) and by almost equally cele- 

 brated and important work by unofficial 

 oceanographers such as Alexander Agassiz, Sir 

 John Murray with Dr. Hjort in the Michael 

 8ars, and the Prince of Monaco in his magnifi- 

 cent . ocean-going yacht, and by much other 

 good work by many investigators in smaller 

 and humbler vessels. One of these supplemen- 

 tary expeditions I must refer to briefly because 

 of its connection with sea-fisheries. The 



