68 
THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
A Sixteenth 
CnmxBT Lescrit 
non or Pelagic 
Ijf*. 
I’roorm or 
Kxowlsdoe 
UBf ECTI N G 
8ba-Wux». 
animals in 1G49 ; 1 while Buffon and other authors of less note contributed to the slowly 
iinrradnu knowledge of littoral and pelagic animals and plants during the fifteenth, 
nth, aud seventeenth centuries. The honour of first employing the dredge as a 
njraii > of scientific inve tigation is claimed for two Italians, Marsili and Donati, who 
about 1750 used an ordinary oyster dredge for obtaining specimens in shallow water. 
During the nineteenth century the knowledge of marine fauna and flora made, as we 
shall see, great advances by an extension of this method. 
Tin; following account, as told by Boyle, of Sir John Hawkins observations, is interest- 
ing as indicating the views regarding marine life at this period : — 
' Were it not for the Moving of the Sea, by the. Force of Winds, Tides and Currents, 
it would corrupt all the World. The Experience of which I saw Anno 1590, tying with a 
Fleet about the Islands of Azores, almost Six Months, the greatest Part of the time we 
were becalmed, with which all the Sea became so replenished with several sorts of Gellies 
n. 1 Forms of Serpents, Adders and Snakes, as seem’d Wonderful ; some green, some 
black, some yellow, some white, some of divers Colours, and many of them had Life, and 
some there wer a Yard and a-half, and some two Yards long; which had I not seen, I 
could hardly have believed; and hereof are witnesses all the Company of the Ships, which 
were then present, so that hardly a Man could draw T a Bucket of Water clear of some 
Corruption.” * 
The first notable account of marine algae is Sir Hans Sloane’s in his Natural History 
of Jamaica. His sea-weeds, however, especially the corallines and calcareous Siphoneae, 
get mixed up with corals and zoophytes. Other pre-Linnaean botanists enumerate forms 
similarly confused. Linnaeus made no considerable reformation in limiting the organisms 
described as “Fuci.” “ Ulva,” “Spongia,” &c. ; and the earliest serious attempt to deal 
with alga- is the Ilistoria Fucorum of Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin in 1768. This book 
wa followed by Esper’s Abbildungen der Tange, or leones Fucorum (1797), and, most 
impor: ant of all, Dawson Turner’s Fuci (1808-1819). However, so late as Lamouroux’s 
Ih U) >•( dr.s Polypiers Coralligenes Jlexibles vulgairement nommes Zoophytes (1816), 
v. e find the calcareous alga and zoophytes intermingled. With the gradual shedding 
out of the zoophytes in the process of producing a natural classification — the work of 
C Agardh, Greville, and others — the marine algae became finally a consolidated natural 
group. 
H. THE PROGRESS OF OCEANOGRAPHY FROM THE TIME OF COOK TO 
THE CHALLENGER EXPEDITION. 
V i* i rJ*n The jKjriod which opens with the voyages of James Cook, in the second half of the 
eighteenth century, may be considered as the beginning of the scientific exploration of 
J )tr» i. llutor .i iiAturalu de Piscibus et Cetis, Libri v., de Exanguibua aquaticie, Libri iv., Frnncf. 1649, 
' • . • 1CS7 3 Boyle* Works, epitomised by Boulton, vol. i. p. 281, London, 1699. 
\ 
