The late Professor Edward Forbes. 143 



department, for the duties of which he was so admirably qua- 

 lified, we need not do more than name the Palaeontological and 

 Geological Map of the British Islands, with explanatory Dis- 

 sertation, forming part of that now national work, Mr Keith 

 Johnston's Physical Atlas, to which Professor Edward Forbes 

 also, and more recently, contributed the map, with letter- 

 press, of the " Distribution of Marine Life." This post of Palae- 

 ontologist he continued to hold till the period of his death ; at 

 least we are not aware that his elevation to the chair of Na- 

 tural History here — the highest and most influential situation 

 of the kind to be obtained in Britain — led to any change, al- 

 though some eventual modification might have been found ex- 

 pedient to obviate over-labour on the one hand, or the neglect 

 of scientific business on the other. 



His being placed among us here was, indeed, deemed a most 

 fortunate circumstance in relation to the proposed establishment 

 of the so-called Economic or Industrial Museum, forming a 

 branch of, or in some other way intimately connected with, the 

 great zoological and geological collections of the university — 

 themselves about to be, as we and all our community fondly 

 hope, endowed, re-arranged, and opened gratuitously to the 

 public. But where is now the accomplished head and the will- 

 ing hand, that would have planned so wisely, and so plainly 

 pointed out, the most approved and appropriate courses which 

 we ought to follow, — where the kindly heart and disinterested 

 disposition, which would have smoothed down and overcome the 

 difficulties which cannot but beset the re-construction, on a 

 new, enlarged, untried foundation, of a great scientific Insti- 

 tute about to be unsealed ? 



But we shall not prolong our mournful meditations on this 

 most sad bereavement, which we really regard as one of the 

 greatest which could have befallen our community. Natural 

 science is necessarily retarded among us for many a day. But 

 let the rising generation bear in mind how much he did with 

 no more assistance than they may still obtain. Let them re- 

 member, not only his love of knowledge, and assiduity in its 

 attainment, but more especially his noble and generous temper, 

 ever radiant even in the midst of opposition, like the sun, whose 



