PEOVISIONAL PREFACE. IX 



department,— Mr H. N. Moseley, M.A. (Oxon.), Mr John Murray, and 

 Dr V. Willemoes-Suhm, a young naturalist of great promise, whose death 

 from an attack of acute erysipelas during our home voyage, was a serious loss 

 to the expedition and to science. Mr Frederick Pearcey, then a mere lad, was 

 entered at Sheerness to assist in the Zoological workroom. His services 

 from that time to the present have been of the greatest value. 



I was well aware from the first that although much of the success of the 

 enterprise depended upon the intelligence with which conditions and pheno- 

 mena were observed and correlated during the voyage, original investigation 

 must be carried on under very special difiiculties at sea; and I believed that our 

 object would be best attained by multiplying and recording accurate observa- 

 tions, and by making large zoological collections preserved in the condition 

 best suited for after study. In carrying out this view I was heartily and 

 loyally seconded by all my colleagues ; few seriously untoward circumstances 

 broke the even current of our work ; and the three years and a half of the 

 ship's commission was occupied almost continuously in recording observations 

 in the different departments included in our instructions, and in capturing, 

 labelling, and preserving animal species. The natural result has been the 

 accumulation of observations and numerical data which may be reckoned by 

 millions, and of a collection in certain branches of Marine Zoology incom- 

 parably larger than any one collection which has hitherto been procured. It 

 is needless to say that the reduction and discussion of so extended a series of 

 observations, and the examination and description of so large a number of 

 animal forms, is a work necessarily involving a considerable amount of time, 

 and the labour of many hands. 



The complete Report will extend, as was originally contemplated, to 

 fourteen or fifteen quarto volumes. The first volume will contain a short 

 narrative of the voyage, with all necessary hydrographical details ; an account 



b 



