MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION AT PORT ERIN. 47 
“ Challenger’’ Office, of the enormous series of deposits (said 
to be over 12,000) which he and the Abbé Renard had accumu- 
lated from many expeditions and all seas. When one entered 
the little laboratory on the top floor of 32, Queen Street, 
after penetrating the dense cloud of tobacco smoke, the 
first thing one heard, rather than saw, was John Murray 
issuing some order or announcing some result, the next was 
the figure of the portly Abbé waving a courteous greeting 
with his perpetual cigar. Then there were the two Assistants, 
Mr. F. Pearcey, who had himself, as a boy, taken part in the 
great expedition, and had been retained as Assistant Curator 
of the collections at the “‘ Challenger” Office, and Mr. James 
Chumley, the Secretary. Murray and Renard were hard at. 
work at the microscope or at chemical reactions in test tubes 
over Bunsen burners, Pearcey was preparing fresh samples 
to be examined and Chumley was noting down results. There 
has probably never been in recent years such a small laboratory 
so poorly equipped, which has turned out such epoch-making 
results. Everything absolutely essential was there, but nothing 
in the least extravagant. The place looked, with its plain 
boards and deal tables and sinks, more like an overcrowded 
scullery than an Oceanographic laboratory. 
But even in his busiest years at the “ Challenger’ Office 
Murray never gave up wholly his work at sea. He was a good 
hand at “ roughing it ’’ and making the best of circumstances, 
and no one could have had a greater appreciation of the open- 
air life. The practical work that he did, more or less periodically 
all the year round, on the West Coast of Scotland from his little 
yacht ‘“‘ Medusa’ is a good example of careful planning and 
resolute carrying out. 
It seems that while working at the results of the 
“Challenger” and other deep-sea expeditions, it occurred 
to Murray that for the purpose of comparison a detailed ex- 
amination of the physical and biological conditions in the 
