28 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



relations, quite independent of disease, is daily becoming 

 more apparent, so much so, that we may come to regard 

 them more in the light of friends than as enemies. In 

 many important processes of manufacture, results for long 

 erroneously ascribed to chemical action, are now known 

 to be biological, and due to micro-organisms. Even in 

 our food products they sometimes actually prove a luxury. 

 Where would our German cousins be without their Sauer 

 Kraut, or our epicures without their game or Gorgonzola? 

 We are probably still only on the verge of discovery of 

 the preventive, if not the curative, value of micro-organ- 

 isms, and it is one of the greatest features of biological 

 science in the latter part of the Victorian Era, that our 

 universities and colleges should possess chairs of bacteri- 

 ology, with biological laboratories as well equipped as 

 those of the chemists or engineers. 



The systematic study of the life of the sea, so brilliantly 

 initiated as we have seen by Edward Forbes, has only 

 become a science during the last half of the Victorian 

 Era, but has been during that period admirably carried 

 out, not only by our own country, but by the United 

 States, Norway, Italy, Austria, and France. 



The lesser voyages of the " Lightning " (1868) and the 

 " Porcupine" (1870), paved the way for the memorable 

 voyage of the " Challenger," which, commanded by Cap- 

 tain Sir George Nares, and under the leadership of Sir 

 Wyville Thomson, traversed, during 3|- years, upwards 

 of 68,000 miles, and collected marine life at over 300 

 stations. The collections were carefully preserved by the 

 naturalists on board, and on arrival home, were distri- 

 buted amongst a large number of competent naturalists, 

 and, under Dr. John Murray's able editorship, are now 

 before the world in about 50 large profusely illustrated 

 volumes, forming the finest library extant of works on 



