MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION AT PORT ERIN. 45 
Thomson induced the Admiralty to give the use of a surveying 
_ vessel for a few weeks for the purpose of sounding the Faroe 
Channel with a view of testing this opinion. That was the 
origin of the “ Knight-Errant” expedition in the summer 
of 1880, conducted by Captain Tizard, R.N., and Mr. John 
_ Murray, under the general direction of Sir Wyville Thomson, 
_who remained at Stornoway, in the Outer Hebrides, during 
_ the four traverses of the region in question. The results (Proc. 
_ Roy. Soc. Edin. for 1882, Vol. XI.) showed that a ridge rising 
to within 300 fathoms of the surface runs from the N.W. of 
- Scotland by the Island of N. Rona to the southern end of the 
_ Faroe fishing bank. ; 
This was followed, after the death of Sir Wyville Thomson, 
by a further expedition in H.M.S. “Triton,” in the 
_ summer of 1882, again under Murray and Tizard, which 
_ was very fruitful of zoological results. The discovery of two 
very different assemblages of animals living on the two sides 
_ of the Wyville Thomson ridge—arctic forms to the North and 
Atlantic forms to the South—gives us a notable example of 
the effect of the environment on the distribution of marine 
_ forms of life. The results of the “ Triton” expedition, written 
_by a number of specialists, were published in the Trans. Roy. 
Soc. Edin. during the next few years—a time during which 
_ Murray came to occupy a more and more prominent position 
in the scientific world of the North. When we remember that 
his earlier fellow-workers and associates at the University 
were such men as Robertson Smith the theologian, Dittmar 
_ the chemist, Sir John Jackson the great contractor, and 
~ Robert Louis Stevenson ; and his later friends, after the return 
_ of the “ Challenger,” were such men as Agassiz, Turner, Crum- 
] Brown, Tait, Renard, Haeckel, Geikie, Blackie, Masson, 
_ Buchan, and Lord McLaren, we can understand the stimulating 
- intellectual atmosphere he lived and worked in and to which 
he doubtless contributed as much as he received. 
»-D 
