MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION AT PORT ERIN. 31 



Appendix A. 



AN ADDRESS UPON 



SIR C. WYVILLE THOMSON and THE " CHALLENGER " 

 EXPEDITION. 



GIVEN BEFORE THE LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



By W. A. Herdman. 



It seems appropriate to follow up the address I gave last 

 year on the life and work of the great Manx Naturalist and 

 early Oceanographer, Professor Edward Forbes — whose 

 centenary we were then celebrating — by some account of the 

 scientific career of that later Oceanographer, Sir Wyville 

 Thomson, whose name will go down through the ages as the 

 leader of the famous " Challenger " Deep-Sea Exploring 

 Expedition. There are many links between these two men. 

 Both were Naturalists in the widest sense, with an extensive 

 knowledge of the Natural Sciences and a great appreciation 

 of Nature in all its aspects. Each occupied at the end of his 

 life the Chair of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh, 

 though neither had time to develop the great school of Marine 

 Biology which might have been expected from such men in 

 such a place had opportunity permitted. Forbes was only 

 15 years the senior, and was at the zenith of his fame — pub- 

 lishing epoch-making views on the distribution of living- 

 things in the sea — at the time when Thomson entered the 

 University of Edinburgh, and no doubt these views would 

 arrest the attention and guide the thoughts of any keen young 

 student of the Natural Sciences. It was Forbes who, on a basis 

 of observations which were then thought to be sufficient, but 

 are now known to be exceptional, placed the zero of life in 

 the sea at 300 fathoms or thereabouts, and it was Wyville 



