xii Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



Geology. Many a long discussion he, Eenard, and I had on this subject, 

 and it was a delightful experience to watch how, bit by bit, out of the 

 vast mass of materials collected by the ' Challenger,' there emerged the 

 clear and impressive generalisations which were embodied in the ' Deep 

 Sea Deposits.' Murray and Eenard, by this remarkable volume, rendered 

 a noble service to Oceanography and to our knowledge of the geological 

 process now in action in the oceans. 



" Murray's later work on the Scottish lakes is another example of his 

 originality and thoroughness. He not only planned this work with great 

 skill and wide knowledge but, as it proceeded, he threw into the labours 

 of his associates much of his own enthusiasm and devotion." 



During the time that Murray was seeing the " Challenger " Reports through 

 the press he was engaged with his friend, the late Mr. Eobert Irvine, and 

 others, on a series of chemical investigations upon the secretion of carbonate 

 of lime from sea-water by marine organisms and on the part played in this 

 process by the waste products given off during their nutrition. He also 

 worked at the bacteriology of the deep-sea deposits, developing the work of 

 the Eussian oceanographers on the sulphuretted hydrogen bacteria of the 

 Black Sea. The series of papers recording these researches appeared in the 

 ' Proceedings ' of the Eoyal Society of Edinburgh. 



The third investigation, referred to by Sir Archibald, on which he 

 embarked in his latter years, was that of the bathymetric survey of the fresh- 

 water lochs of Scotland. The Councils of the Eoyal Societies of London and 

 of Edinburgh had urged the Government to undertake this survey. The 

 Government did not feel that this enterprise came within the province of the 

 Ordnance Survey Office nor within that of the Hydrographic Department of 

 the Admiralty, but when Murray wanted a thing done, in the long run it 

 generally was done, and he and Mr. Frederick Pullar in 1896 commenced the 

 work and had already published some papers of importance when, by the 

 accidental death of Mr. Frederick Pullar by an ice accident in 1901, the work 

 was interrupted. His father, however, Mr. Laurence Pullar, determined to 

 see the work through, and provided a large part of the funds used for this 

 purpose, and in 1902 a staff of assistants was appointed to resume the survey. 

 For the next four years the surveying work was vigorously carried on, and 

 some 60,000 soundings were recorded from no less than 562 inland lakes. 

 Biological and physical observations were also carried on during the two 

 following years, and the results of this, the most careful survey ever carried 

 out on the inland waters of any country, were published in six handsome 

 volumes in 1910. 



One would have thought that three such problems as Deep-Sea Deposits, 

 the Origin of Coral Islands, and the Fresh-Water Lochs of Scotland, would 

 have exhausted the energies of any man, but Sir John seems to have been 

 tireless in his activity. Besides editing the 50 volumes of the " Challenger " 

 Reports, he was the author of the summary of the scientific results of the 



