136 The late Professor Edward Forbes. 



warm and abiding love of Geology. At this period also, it 

 may be stated as a remarkable, perhaps unprecedented fact, 

 that he compiled a Manual of British Natural History in all 

 its departments, — a youthful labour, a reference to which, we 

 know, he afterwards found serviceable up almost to his close 

 of life. 



At sixteen he visited London ; and while there, was chiefly 

 occupied by the study of the art of drawing, under Sasse, a 

 celebrated trainer for the Royal Academy in those days. The 

 careful practice of drawing in outline from the antique, which 

 he then acquired, was of advantage to him for ever after in 

 his zoological pursuits and publications. About a year after 

 this, he came to Edinburgh, and entered the medical classes, 

 as the best course of initial and elementary study in relation 

 to those departments of science to which he had even thus 

 early determined to dedicate his life. He became at once the 

 friend and pupil of Professor Jameson ; and from that period 

 till he found himself his successor (how much we mourn the 

 brief survival !) he frequently referred, with grateful acknow- 

 ledgment, to the benefit he had reaped from his scientific in- 

 struction, and friendly counsel. In the summer of the ensu- 

 ing year he first endeavoured to apply practically the know- 

 ledge he had now acquired, by making an exploration of a 

 part of Norway, — chiefly with a view to the mineralogy 

 of that picturesque country. He returned with large collec- 

 tions, and published an account of his proceedings and obser- 

 vations in Loudon's Magazine (vols. viii. and ix.) under the 

 title of " Notes of a Natural History Tour in Norway," — 

 being his first contributions to science. At nearly the same 

 period, and in the same work, he printed his earliest papers on 

 submarine researches, — " Records of the results of Dredg- 

 ing," — for which he became eventually so noted, having, in 

 fact, commenced in his sixteenth year those remarkable obser- 

 vations by means of the dredge, with the accurate register of 

 depths, which, it is well known and admitted, have thrown 

 an entirely new light upon the geographical distribution of 

 marine life. We need not here say how amply he has filled, 

 even to overflowing, the measure of that early promise. He 



