1890-91.] Prince of Monaco on Ship for Study of the Sea. 295 
A New Ship for the Study of the Sea. By His Serene 
Highness the Prince of Monaco. 
(Read July 15, 1891.) 
I had wished to render my visit to your country, which has 
always been in such sympathy with natural science, more interesting 
by the presence of a new scientific instrument — of a ship con- 
structed entirely for scientific research; but, in spite of the best 
of wills, I have, after proceeding for several hours on the way to 
Edinburgh, been obliged to return to the Thames, in order to allow 
the builders to finish their work, in which they are unfortunately 
in arrear. 
But it would have been very painful for me to give up this visit 
which promised me so much satisfaction, and I have come even 
without my ship to speak to you about her and to claim in 
advance your sympathy with its future work. 
It is to do honour to Oceanography, — of that science whose field 
has only just begun to open itself to investigation, — that your society, 
one of the highest in the scientific world, has assembled to-day. 
And what is Oceanography? This is a question which, at the 
present time, may reasonably be asked by anyone of ordinary 
education, but it is one which will soon appear as strange as would 
be “What is Geography?” Yet Oceanography constitutes this 
most important department of Physiography, because it includes 
the study of the immense realm of the waters, with all the secrets 
which it can disclose to us of the past of our planet and of the 
conditions of its formation, while at the same time it can enlighten 
us on many points of its future. In fact this science includes in its 
programme the questions of the formation of the solid layers which, 
slowly deposited at the bottom of the ocean during thousands of 
centuries, are preparing under our eyes future continents; unless our 
earth be now too old to react as of old, when the material accumu- 
lated in the depths of its seas raised itself into subaerial mountains 
with all its fossil inhabitants, the faithful guardians of the secret of 
the great problem of the origin of life. 
