46 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
moreover these marine forms have given rise in the past 
to the land and fresh water animals, and also to those 
of the deep sea—they are the parent community from 
which migrating swarms have been given off; it is 
amongst these marine animals round coasts that there 
has been the greatest over-crowding and the most severe 
struggle for existence, and it 1s there probably that, under 
the stress of competition, important new habits and struc- 
tures have been evolved and modified. Many of the 
ereat biological discoveries and generalizations have been 
made from the study of marine animals, and many of the 
problems which still await solution, some of them theor- 
etical questions of the greatest general interest, will 
probably have to be worked out in the abundant and 
varied material which presents itself to the marine biolo- 
gist. Then again the sea is so large, and so comparatively 
unknown that there is much more chance of coming upon 
interesting new forms of life there than elsewhere. 
Finally it should not be forgotten that we are a maritime 
nation, that we most of us take kindly to the sea, and 
that we naturally regard it as a duty to thoroughly explore 
our coast lines, to examine the sea bottom lying off our 
shores and make known the conditions of existence and 
the various kinds of plants and animals living within the 
British Area. Probably these reasons sufficiently account 
for marine biology having flourished for the last century 
in this country and for the fact that there have always 
been amongst British Naturalists, enthusiastic investi- 
gators of the sea bottom by means of the dredge and the 
trawl. 
I shall merely add that although Aristotle collected 
marine animals on the shores of Asia Minor more than 
2000 years ago, and it is over a century since the Danish 
Naturalist O. F. Miller invented a dredge for scientific — 
