MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION AT PORT ERIN. 51 



other visits to Italy, France, Switzerland, Greece, 

 Palestine, and Egypt since. In 1896 lie called upon 

 Clans in Vienna, and seems, from his diary, to have had 

 a pleasant visit, with some discussion on Copepoda. The 

 Prince of Monaco invited him, in June, 1889, to his house 

 in Paris, where he met Baron de Gruerne and other French 

 Zoologists, and was much interested in hearing from them 

 of the tow-nets and other oceanographic collecting 

 apparatus used on the Prince's yacht. A trip to the 

 Canary Islands, in 1887, with Mr. Macmillan, yielded 

 some zoological material upon which papers were written, 

 to be referred to below. Many of the acquaintances 

 made on these travels ripened into friendship, and he had 

 latterly interesting scientific correspondents in many 

 parts of the world. 



Dr. Nicholson, writing of him as a student, says : 

 " His geniality and great simplicity of character made 

 him a host of friends ; and he seems to have retained this 

 quality just the same as in old days." The "old days" 

 were when he was starting his business life in Liverpool, 

 and the same friend writes of that time : " After studying 

 science, he had a great wish to begin medicine. I tried 

 to dissuade him from this, for I thought he could not do 

 both well. The desire continued for a long time, I think. 

 Of course he would have made a successful practitioner, 

 but probably he did much better work as it was." 



In 1867 his younger sister died, after an illness of two 

 years which Isaac did much to lighten and cheer by his 

 improvised fairy tales and bright stories of the imagina- 

 tion. Her death was followed in two years by that of his 

 father, and in one more by that of his youngest brother, 

 Edwin, at the age of 22, just on the completion of his 

 medical course at Edinburgh. This brother's career had 

 been one of great promise, and these successive breaks in 



