January S, 1897.] 



SCIENCE. 



55 



ber of contributors to our knowledge, who on 

 the Continent would be called amateurs in 

 science — men who devoted their lives to the 

 study and advancement of science from pure 

 love for the subject. He need only instance 

 the names of Cavendish, Joule and Darwin to 

 show that they included men of the very highest 

 rank. In giving this laboratory to the English 

 nation he had done so in the firm conviction 

 that this country would continue to bring forth 

 in the future, as it had done in the past, men 

 of the same rank and of the same devotion to 

 science for its own sake, and it was a fond hope 

 of his that such men would find there all the 

 facilities and all the necessary appliances for 

 carrying out their researches. The further we 

 advanced in the study of nature the more accu- 

 rate and elaborate was the apparatus required, 

 and the more difficult it became to carry on 

 delicate work in a private laboratory. He had 

 placed that laboratory in the center of London 

 because he believed that this great city would 

 continue to be the intellectual center of the 

 civilized world, where the brightest minds 

 would congregate. He had intrusted it to the 

 Royal Institution so as to insure its being open 

 to men and women of all schools and of all 

 views on scientific questions. 



THE MARINE BIOLOGY OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



The committee of the British Association on 

 the marine zoology, botany and geology of the 

 Irish Sea presented, at the Liverpool meeting, 

 its fourth and final report. The committee con- 

 sisted of ten members, Avith Prof. W. A. Herd- 

 man as chairman and reporter. The report 

 reviews the earlier work by the Liverpool Ma- 

 rine Biology Committee and the investigations 

 carried out in the Puffin Island station since 

 1887. That committee, in addition to annual 

 reports, has published three volumes of the 

 fauna, recording 2,133 species. In 1892 the 

 committee relinquished Puffin Island and built 

 the new biological station at a very much more 

 convenient and richer locality. Port Erin, at 

 the southwest end of the Isle of Man. In the 

 following year a second building — the Aqua- 

 rium — was added, and since then the institu- 

 tion has been constantly in use and has proved 

 increasingly useful each season, both to mem- 



bers of the committee and to other naturalists. 

 Since the opening of the Port Erin station, in 

 1892, 56 biologists have paid over 200 longer or 

 shorter visits for the purpose of working at the 

 marine fauna and flora. The British A.ssocia- 

 tion Committee for the investigation of the Ma- 

 rine Zoology, Botany and Geology of the Irish 

 Sea was appointed in 1892, and three previous 

 reports have been submitted. The first, laid 

 before the Nottingham meeting in 1893, gave 

 an account of the limits and more prominent 

 physical conditions of the area under investi- 

 gation, with a brief interim notice of the dredg- 

 ing expeditions undertaken during the year. 

 The second report, at the Oxford meeting in 

 1894, gave a fuller description of the methods 

 of work on one of the dredging expeditions, 

 and also included an account of the distribution 

 of the submarine deposits of the area and a 

 notice of the chief results of the year's work, 

 including some new species. The third report, 

 given at Ipswich, dealt chiefly with the subma- 

 rine deposits, the investigation of the surface 

 currents, and with the distribution of animals 

 as shown from dredging statistics. In the pres- 

 ent final report the committee gives for the first 

 time a complete list of all the species recorded 

 from the area of the Irish Sea investigated. 

 This list fills 28 pages. The greater part of the 

 work of the committee has been zoological ; 

 botany, however, has been represented by sev- 

 eral investigators, and lists are given of the 

 marine algae, including diatoms. 



During the last fifty years, says Nature, much 

 work has been done by marine naturalists all 

 round the British coasts, with a view to deter- 

 mining the distribution of those animals which 

 live on the floor of the sea. It has been fully 

 recognized that the localities frequented by 

 many marine species are very definite and ex- 

 tremely limited in extent, and that both the 

 nature of the sea bottom and the creatures 

 which live there exhibit as much variety as we 

 are accustomed to find on land. The Marine 

 Biological Association, with the assistance of a 

 grant made for the purpose by the Royal So- 

 ciety, has recently been engaged in an attempt 

 to place our knowledge of this subject upon a 

 sounder basis by investigating in detail some of 



