296 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
To establish the laws of Oceanography it is necessary to know 
the temperature, the motion, the chemical constitution, the density, 
and the zoology of the waters of the ocean at all depths. It is 
necessary to borrow a little from all the natural sciences. It is thus 
that Peter the Great appears to have first broken ground in the 
science, by having soundings made in the Baltic, the White Sea, 
and the Sea of Azof. Soon afterwards it was your countryman, 
James Cook, who, amongst the first, engaged in oceanographical 
research in one of his great voyages on board the “ Resolution.” 
As is usual in the early stages of all sciences, the means at 
disposal were of the most primitive kind, and until your magnifi- 
cent a Challenger” expedition, the observations collected in the 
course of numerous voyages, indicate much good will, without 
offering any of the precision or continuity of accurate observation, 
which are expected of the scientific observations of our time. 
But the minds of the men who made these early observations 
gradually acquired a certain sagacity due to the contemplation of 
nature in the open, which it is difficult to acquire -within the four 
walls of a laboratory, and without which great discoveries often 
remain barren. 
It is thus that the great Darwin returned from his long voyage 
in the “Beagle ” absorbed in the conceptions from which sprang the 
theories which threw a light on the scientific world as unexpected 
as would the rising of the sun in a new part of the horizon. 
Nowadays the scientific men who forsake their laboratories for 
the open air are many, but the organisation of a scientific oceanic 
expedition is not easy. Sometimes the captain of the ship is not 
enough of a man of science to understand what science demands 
and to devote himself with the necessary zeal to it, he executes 
coldly the orders which he has received; sometimes it is the 
scientific men on board who are not sufficiently acquainted with 
the sea and life on board ship to be able to utilise their time to the 
best advantage of their scientific work. Owing to these causes, also, 
difficulties often arise between the captain and the scientific 
observers. Further, the keeping up of millions of men, the manu- 
facture of hundred ton guns, and the launching of ironclads and 
torpedo vessels, do not leave much room in the budgets of most 
nations for intellectual work or for the labour of men who would 
