MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION AT PORT ERIN. #9 



These pioneering expeditions— the results of which are 

 not even yet fully made known to the scientific world — were 

 epoch-making inasmuch as they not only opened up this 

 new world to the systematic marine biologist, but gave glimpses 

 of world-wide problems in connection with the physics, the 

 chemistry and the biology of the sea which are only now 

 being adequately investigated by the modern Oceanographer. 

 These results, which aroused intense interest amongst the 

 leading scientific men of the time, were so rapidly surpassed 

 and overshadowed by the still greater achievements of the 

 " Challenger " and other National Exploring Expeditions 

 that followed in the seventies and eighties of last century, 

 that there is some danger of their real importance being lost 

 sight of ; but it ought never to be forgotten that they first 

 demonstrated the abundance of life of a varied nature in 

 depths formerly supposed to be azoic, and, moreover, that 

 some of the deep-sea animals were related to extinct forms 

 belonging to Jurassic, Cretaceous and Tertiary periods. 



Naturally Wyville Thomson, the young (then about forty) 

 and active originator and leading spirit of these new and 

 successful investigations, became a famous man. In 1869 he 

 was elected to the fellowship of the Royal Society, and in 

 1870 he succeeded Allman as professor of Natural History 

 in the University of Edinburgh, the post held by Forbes 

 some 15 years before. Thomson was a fluent and lucid lecturer, 

 and a successful professor, greatly appreciated by his many 

 students. His classes at Edinburgh were amongst the largest 

 in the University, and were probably unequalled in size by 

 any classes of Zoology elsewhere in the country. Had time 

 and strength permitted, he might have developed a great 

 school of Marine Biology in connection with his University, 

 but larger schemes further afield almost immediately claimed 

 his attention. 



The undoubted success of the preliminary expeditions 

 in the " Lightning " and " Porcupine " encouraged Carpenter 



