Sir John Murray. 



IX 



he was one of the leading spirits in stirring up that Society to urge the 

 Admiralty to undertake the " Challenger " Expedition. At the Admiralty 

 they were aided by the then hydrographer, Admiral Gr. H. Eichards, who was 

 extremely sympathetic with the work. 



As the introduction to the narrative of ' The Cruise of the ' Challenger ' ' 

 recites : " The vast ocean lay scientifically unexplored. All the efforts of 

 the previous decade had been directed to the strips of water round the coast, 

 and to enclosed or partially enclosed seas. Great things had certainly been 

 done there, but certainly far greater things remained to be done beyond. 

 This consideration led to the conception of the idea of a great exploring 

 expedition which should circumnavigate the globe, and, if possible, find out 

 the conditions of life at the surface of the sea, at the intermediate depths, 

 and also at the profound abysses of the ocean. Sir John Murray's main 

 interest in the expedition was at first physical and geological rather than 

 biological, though he soon acquired a real knowledge of animals, at any rate 

 in so far as they affected the problems which appealed more nearly to him." 

 He was an adept at criticising machines and instruments which plumb 

 the secrets of the deep, and as soon as the results of his researches on the 

 bottom of the deep sea had appeared he was recognised at once, and as long 

 as he lived, as the authority on the deposits covering the floor of the ocean. 



Sir John was no specialist. He had ever the widest point of view of 

 the chemistry, the physics, the geology, and the biology of the ocean, and 

 to him these varying sciences always had their full value in the problem 

 which he had made his own. He was constantly devising new sounding 

 apparatus for bringing up samples of the sea bottom, thermometers for 

 testing the bottom temperature, instruments for registering the pressure at 

 great depths, and other implements which have made our knowledge of the 

 depths of the sea accurate and even minute. 



The ship sailed from England, quite at the end of 1872, with John Murray 

 on board as Naturalist at a salary of £200 per annum. From the time of its 

 departure Murray gave especial attention to the various oozes and other 

 deposits which compose the floor of the ocean, and at an early period he came 

 to the conclusion that Bailey, Johannes Muller, Count Pourtales, Krohn, 

 Max Schultze and Ernst Haeckel were right when they attributed certain of 

 the minute shells at the bottom of the ocean to organisms which live nearer 

 the surface. Murray correlated the contents of the surface tow-net with the 

 results of soundings and found a close relation to exist between the surface 

 fauna of any locality and the deposit which lies beneath it. Amongst other 

 organisms he paid much attention to the curious coccospheres and rhabdo- 

 spheres, as Murray now for the first time called them. He devised an 

 ingenious method of abstracting these extremely minute organisms from the 

 sea-water by stretching pieces of fine thread through a bucket of salt water 

 and allowing it to stand for the night. The examination of the threads 

 next morning showed these organisms entangled among the strands. Another 

 unfailing source of supply of these curious, and still imperfectly understood, 



