May 9, 1884.] 
is done, but the collections are only now begin- 
ning to yield up the treasures of fact which 
they contain. ‘The first of the final reports ap- 
peared in 1880; and now ten massive quarto 
volumes, crowded with sumptuous lithographed 
plates, have been printed, eight of these in the 
natural history series, two in the ‘ narrative,’ 
which includes also the results of the physical 
observations. ‘The completion of the entire se- 
ries is promised for 1887, but it can safely be 
predicted that the last of the row of twenty 
volumes will not be placed upon our book- 
shelves before 1890. Preliminary reports have 
appeared to the number of at least three hun- 
dred: and, since it has been decided that the 
t 
SCIENCE. dT 
the subsequent important explorations by Nor- 
way, Sweden, and Germany, and the expedi- 
tions of the Italian Washington and Violante, 
the French Travailleur and Talisman, the Dutch 
Willem Barents, and the American Blake, Fish 
Hawk, and Albatross, would not all have been 
carried on by grants from public treasuries. 
What the several governments might have done 
in fitting out ships, it is impossible for us to 
know. No one can question, however, that 
naturalists in all countries have been inspired 
and stimulated in a most salutary way by the 
action of the British government in publishing 
every half-year one of these sumptuously 
printed Challenger volumes, — each a collec- 
THE CHALLENGER. 
biological section of the British association is 
to devote its attention at the Montreal meet- 
ing almost exclusively to pelagic life, we may 
expect a large addition to the Challenger bib- 
liography during the present year. 
The Challenger expedition was planned and 
executed solely in the interest of pure science, 
no utilitarian aims having ever been considered 
in its organization: it was the direct outgrowth 
of the previous expeditions of the Lightning 
and the Porcupine, inspired and conducted by 
Carpenter, Gwyn Jeffreys, and Wyville Thom- 
son. The action of the British admiralty had, 
in consequence, a particularly salutary effect 
upon the policy of other nations ; for it is highly 
probable, that, had there been no Challenger, 
tion of monographs from the hands of master- 
workmen in natural history, not English only, 
but American, Scandinavian, Dutch, French, 
and Italian. | 
The history of the expedition, and the gen- 
eral nature of its discoveries, were long ago 
published to the world through Sir Wyville 
Thomson’s ‘ The Atlantic,’ ? Professor Mose- 
ley’s ‘ Notes,’ ?.a work which should stand al- 
ways on the same shelf with Darwin’s ‘Voyage 
of a naturalist,’ Lord George Campbell’s * Log 
letters from the Challenger’ (London, 1876), 
1 The voyage of the Challenger, — the Atlantic; a prelimi- 
nary account of the exploring voyage of H.M.S. Challenger. 
1878. 2vols. 8°. 
2 Notes by a naturalist on the Challenger. 
London, 1879. 
620 p. 8°. 
